Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Therefore, communication is an issue. It is about making sure people are aware of what services are available and that they are free or affordable. That would also be important. I know Save Our Sons & Daughters, SOSAD, for example, does some brilliant work in my community offering counselling services to people. The family resource centres also offer counselling but they are inundated with people and the HSE refers people to them, which is ridiculous in this day and age.

Staying on the over-prescription model, it is something I hear a lot about. I hear it from parents of children who are attending child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and there have been different scandals around CAMHS and what is happening in the different teams. It is continuing into adult treatment as well. There is also a huge issue with parents of autistic children who are with the children's disability network teams but have developed a mental health issue, often because of the lack of supports within the community. Then CAMHS is refusing to address their issue because they are autistic. When I say that to somebody in CAMHS, they say they are not getting support from the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, and the CDNTs say that CAMHS is refusing point blank to deal with the children. We need a lot more collaboration between different organisations. As was noted, many people are falling between two stools where they are supposed to be pigeon-boxed into one or the other and then they are saying that they do not fit the criteria for mental health or they do not fit the criteria for disability, where they actually have both issues.

I am concerned about the over-reliance on prescription, both in the community and in residential settings, and about the continued use of detention orders in certain cases and even wards of court. When we are coming up to the implementation of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act that should not be continuing in this day and age. Witnesses talked about how investment is needed but we also need to look at an overhaul of services and how they are delivered because over the years, we have had an over-reliance on disabled people, especially those with intellectual disabilities or those with mental health issues being institutionalised, locked away and forgotten about and in many cases mistreated. Thankfully we are a long way from that but we still have an awfully long way to go. Do our guests have any comments to make on medication or the over-reliance on it?