Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Future of Mental Health Care

Restructuring of Mental Health Services: HSE

1:30 pm

Mr. Dean Sullivan:

I do not think I will get the chance to talk about this during the course of the afternoon. On the committee's interim report which was mentioned by the Chairman, mental health services are not delivered in a bubble. There is huge reliance on primary care services in meeting the bulk of needs of mental health patients. When we ran services up and down, it became difficult to plan for the silos being run to actually work out the opportunities to provide more seamless care for patients. We now have a structure in place that allows for that path in the oversight of all community services, everything from primary care services through to mental health and older persons' and disability services on the planning and strategy side of things. Ms O'Connor has responsibility in working with Mr. Ryan and others for making sure services are delivered. As I mentioned, Dr. Philip Dodd is solely involved on the mental health service line, given his particular professional background. We have and will continue to have a very clear focus on mental health services, but we will have a really clear focus on understanding the needs of patients and making sure we will put in place appropriate evidence-based services to respond to their needs. That was more difficult to do in the past.

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