Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I commend and fully support the Sinn Féin motion. There is no doubt there is a clear need to provide dedicated mental health teams on a 24-7 basis in all hospital areas. However, I wish to make one initial point. I am very conscious of the devastating trauma suicide causes for families who have been affected directly. My own certainly was, and I know many families of Members of this House have been directly affected by suicide. It is a devastating experience and we need a very significant response to that.

We also have to view mental health not solely in terms of the devastating impact of suicide but we need to ensure we do not lose sight of the fact that mental health issues manifest themselves in a variety of often interconnected forms. We must be in a position to respond to mental health issues wherever they arise. As such, we must strive for a mental health system in which crisis intervention is rarely the first service with which a person engages. Instead we must be proactive in our approach to mental health issues and design a service which works to address them at the earliest possible stage. To do this, we must move away from the overly medicalised approach to mental health care and ensure much greater access to counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT, and other therapies, rather than the reliance on medication which many service users report exists at present.

We must also be cognisant of the fact that mental health issues often occur in conjunction with other health difficulties. A study by the UK Department of Health suggested that 75% of drug users and people who use drug services also have mental health difficulties, and the reverse applies as well. For that reason, I appeal to the Minister of State to bring an end to this situation where we are not able to cope with dual diagnosis. The way the HSE operates is that a patient is either part of the addiction services or part of the mental health services but the two are interconnected. We must stop that structural distinction between the two categories of patients. We must also ensure we do not have those barriers between the mental health services and primary care services because, in the main, primary care services should be delivered alongside mental health services. We should not lose sight either of the issue of infant mental health, which is gaining attention and which needs Government attention as soon as possible.

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