Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)

Obviously I think this is an excellent motion as I would not have signed my name to it otherwise. Many interesting things have been said and this is what I have to say about it. There is no doubting that there have been many improvements in our approach to the issue of mental health in the past half century or so. An elderly relative of mine informed me - I was shocked when I first heard it - that in the 1950s they witnessed a man with mental illness being loaded onto a boat to Liverpool in what was, in effect, a cage. I have also heard stories that in the 1940s people with mental illness were housed on straw in some mental hospitals and hosed down in a communal fashion in order to wash them. One could only conclude that if one was not suffering from a mental illness before one went into a mental institute then one certainly would be afterwards.

The town I come from had up until the mid-1990s a mental hospital called St. Patrick's and known as St. Pat's. It was the last place on the planet that anyone would have wanted to end up. In fact it was used as a threat and term of abuse to suggest that one might "end up there" as the saying goes. In 1988 a few years before it closed my father was given the contract by the health board to replace the wooden steps on one of the stairwells. I was given the job by my father of being the gofer. At 16 I finally got to see what was behind the walls of St. Pat's. While not being anywhere near as bad as I had heard from the 1940s, it was nonetheless bleak. I always remember one particularly striking thing and that was seeing men and women leaning against a wall and rocking back and over for hours on end.

It was so bleak that when my father had finished the job it left an indelible mark on me that lasts to this day. As a result, my biggest fear of suffering from a mental illness would not be the illness itself but the fear of having to engage with the services. The hospital appeared to be arranged in such a way that the higher up the floors one was then the more ill one was classified. The hospital was closed in 1996 whereupon many of the residents were moved out into the community and others who were not suitable placed in other institutions such as Ballinasloe. When they tried to move people into the community, some people, including neighbours of mine, objected because they were scared of them, but fortunately not anymore.

The hospital was replaced with a prison. I was, under protest, an inmate at that prison on two occasions for a short time. While the name of the institution had changed much had remained the same. The place was as bleak as ever in fact slightly more so. On many occasions I came across people who were obviously mentally ill. I met one man who was leaning against a wall and rocked back and over manically similar to what I had seen in the same building when it was a mental hospital. The question is as follows. When the State decided to close the hospitals did it make adequate resources available for the people who were formerly housed at the institution? A report done by the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine found that 60% of females and 35% of males have suffered some form of psychological illness. So even though we had officially moved away from a particular type of institution for treating people with mental illness, many have just ended up being treated in the same way as always except we now call them criminals.

One of the main reasons I feared mental institutions so much is because at a very young age I suffered from depression. I spent evenings when I was younger when all I was capable of doing was staring into the fire for hours on end. At the time it was considered preposterous by a great many people that one could suffer from depression as a young person. I remember a nun in my school saying: "What are you on about? Don't be daft." The irony of it all. Another fear I had of the institutions was that I had heard people had been put in there for being different. As a child and to this very day I could justifiably be described as an eccentric so this added further to my fears.

It was not until I was 23 years of age that I tried to deal with my mental health issues. I went into my GP in Galway and told the doctor in question how I was finding life a struggle. I told the doctor that I had motivational problems - by the way I was not smoking cannabis at the time - and that no matter what I did I found life to be struggle. I had even contemplated suicide. Deputy Clare Daly laughed at me earlier when I told her that only reason I did not commit suicide was that I did not have the motivation to do it, which is bad. The doctor in question unfortunately knew nothing about me. They never asked me about my diet. They never asked me if I did any exercise. They never asked me how I spent my days. In fact all I was asked was whether I would like to take Prozac. I was given a prescription and told to come back in a couple of weeks. Fortunately I never took the tablets. I am not saying that is the answer, but for me it was. However, the idea that I would have to take tablets inspired me to find another solution. I immediately took up exercise by running five miles per day and changed to a diet which meant that I was getting everything that was essential to a body working well. As the saying goes, a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. That has certainly been the case for me. From listening to some people in the mental health profession one would think that all has changed since I went looking for help in the mid-1990s. However, from talking to people in my constituency clinic over the past eight years it is quite clear that people are still being offered tablets as a first rather than as a last resort. This is something which must change. I do not know how many times I have heard of people being given tranquillisers in order to deal with grief. How can one grieve when up to one's eyeballs in drugs? Surely it should be normal to be hysterical after losing a loved one.

Ultimately prevention is better than cure and from an economic point of view it is infinitely cheaper. An individual can only do so much in order to prevent mental illness. A responsibility also rests with the State and society. We must develop a society which does not treat people like a cog in an economic machine. We must look at ways in which the inevitable stress of life can be minimised. However, at the moment we are going in the opposite directions. Bullying has become an acceptable way to progress in life. This should come as no surprise as the very idea of capitalism is based on the survival of the fittest - in other words the crushing of the weak.

One of the most popular shows on television at the moment is "X-Factor". This show is based on demeaning people. It deliberately sets out to expose, in the most public way possible, performers' imperfections upon which a crowd of people savage them by booing them. There is also "The Apprentice" with Bill Cullen, the entrepreneur as he keeps calling himself, where bullying is just par for the course and the person who can put up with his bullying the best ends up getting a job. We have the same thing on "Dragons' Den" where people's ideas are trashed and the more demeaning the dragon is the better. Imagine if that went on in the schoolyard. It would not be allowed. However, it is inevitable that this philosophy on life will be taken up by children in the playground as well as by budding entrepreneurs who see this as the only way to succeed. If such a philosophy is allowed to pervade, it is inevitable that we will live in a more stressful society and as a result end up with extensive mental health problems.

Obsession with body image is something which is causing major problems in mental health. While this used to be more particular to women, it is now spreading to men. I pity any young woman who has to live in this environment whereby if she is not a size zero then she is a failure. Magazines such as Heat etc. are exceptionally damaging to the mental health of this generation. They publish close-ups of women's legs taken by the low-life paparazzi that are done in such a way as to highlight cellulite. I ask Deputies to remember that cellulite is bad. It is a modern symbol of failure unlike in the past where it was sign that one was not afraid to eat one's dinner. This inevitably leads to insecurities in women which make them feel somewhat inferior. In many cases it leads to mental illness. There is also the issue of financial stress, which I will not get a chance to discuss.

Our latest end of pipe solution to dealing with mental health issues in Ireland is A Vision for Change, a document first published in 2006.

Its goal was to make mental health services in Ireland person-centred, recovery-orientated, holistic, community-based, multi-disciplinary and population-based. While these are laudable goals they require extra resources. When the document was first published it was stated that for the strategy to be implemented 2,000 extra staff would need to be employed. This has not happened. The health service has instead taken on thousands of new administrative staff. Not only have extra staff not been recruited but staff are currently being let go and not replaced. I am told that locally in Roscommon one-third of staff will have left the service by next March.

I have heard the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, talk about this issue. She appears to speak with genuine compassion and concern. The ball is now in her court. We need to treat the issue of mental illness seriously. We need to treat it with the urgency with which one treats a cancer patient or a person with a heart problem. We need, by the end of her term as Minister of State, for people to be able to genuinely open up about mental issues without feeling shame or, more important, without being made feel shame. As things stand, that is not the case. I implore the Government to do something about this.

The Technical Group has decided, in order that this issue be depoliticised, that there is no need to vote on this motion. It is too important an issue to be made a political football of. The only thing that needs a kicking here is our old attitudes to mental illness.

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