Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

I oppose this amendment. Regarding the term "psychosocial disabilities", involuntary admission is a very unusual instrument in the State. We have a very low rate of involuntary admission compared to other jurisdictions most especially the UK, which is our closest neighbour. It is a really serious step for any practitioner in the community to involuntarily admit someone. This is based on my 35-year experience as a GP. The situations where we have admitted people to hospital involuntarily are those where someone is psychotically ill - usually with schizophrenia, bipolar manic depressive disorder or acute psychotic episode. Thankfully, there are some acute psychotic episodes that are related to stress and people do very well once there is early intervention but to widen the terminology to psychosocial disability would do something we thought we had left behind us. I think of how 40 or 50 years ago, we put people into psychiatric units who should never have been there for a range of reasons. Psychosocial covers a myriad of things from social behaviour to personality disorder and addiction issues. We have moved on from that. There must be a high bar for involuntary admission. I believe practitioners in the community apply a high bar to it for the very reason that it is an enormous step to detain someone, take away their liberty and involuntarily admit them to a psychiatric institution.

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