Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Wellness, Well-being and Mental Health: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of John CrownJohn Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and I thank them. I have different reasons for thanking both of them. In particular I pay much credit to what Dr. D'Alton is doing in developing the field of psycho-oncology in Ireland. It is a critical area. I stated before, and it is very sad, that over my life I have known 11 people who ended their lives through self-harm. Because of the world in which I live they were disproportionately health care professionals, including doctors, nurses and medical students. We have all heard of the very sad, tragic and high-profile cases involving people who found themselves suddenly at the sharp end of poverty, and people with tremendous social pathologies visited upon them through deprivation and inequality. It is critical that we address all of these issues. Poor people have all kinds of bad stuff happen to them health-wise. They have more cancer, heart disease, diabetes and self-harm. These are all very good reasons, in addition to all of the other reasons, we must address issues of poverty and inequality in society. This is one more reason to do so.

In truth, there is a biological basis for much mental illness and we cannot deny this. I do not want to give the Government a free pass on this. We have a poorly developed medical service in general. We have a very poorly developed psychiatric service in general. We have poor access to psychiatric services in general. We have too few psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, beds and clinics and waiting lists are too long. All of these are wrong.

The folks I knew fit a number of patterns. Some of them were absolutely not victims of poverty or inequality. Some of them had the most loving and supportive families one could wish to have. These were not people who found themselves at the sharp end of any particular trauma. They had a disease.

Disease sometimes needs treatment, and although it is a little unfashionable to say it, the treatment is often medical. While we desperately need to build up the talk therapy support side of things, we need to have good early warning systems for that transition from reaction to really bad environmental circumstances occurring. In putting someone into a situation where he or she feels there may well be no hope, it may be despondency which is characterising his or her situation. We need to address these issues. It would be a mistake not to acknowledge also that we have done the other part of it very badly indeed.

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