Mary Moran (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, to the House. I will not reiterate much of what has been said. The Minister of State is aware of my views in this area.

This debate is on mental health and suicide. When I saw the title I asked why we were intending to have a debate on both mental health and suicide. When will we separate the two? There are people who have mental health issues but who never contemplate suicide, while many people who commit suicide do not have mental health issues. We are constantly banding mental health and suicide under the same umbrella. They are interlinked, in the same way as many other things, but they are two separate areas. I ask that we separate these issues next time and have a full debate on suicide and suicide prevention and a full debate on mental health issues.

I welcome the fact that the new strategic framework will be cross-departmental. That is vital. The Minister of State said it had to include the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. I am aware that transport is an issue, as people in rural communities cannot get from A to B because they do not have transport or access to it. The Department of Education and Skills is also involved. This an area I am going to mention also, as nobody else has raised it. Let us have a recovery-based approach rather than a medical approach, as referred to already. We all know of cases in this regard. In a debate here in February I mentioned a child with an intellectual disability and severe behavioural problems who is taken to a doctor and handed medicine. When people are told they do not want medicine, they are told it will calm them down.

What about the therapy? I raised this in the House last February. I am not putting it on the Minister of State, because she cannot chase everything, but I have received no response since last February - that was not the first time I raised the matter - regarding the availability of a child psychiatrist in County Louth. I have been raising the matter for the last two years but there is still no child psychiatrist. Once an individual reaches the age of 16 years he or she is out of the paediatric service, but a child cannot access the adult service until he or she reaches the age of 18. When I raised the matter previously on an Adjournment debate I was told that CAMHS had agreed to see 17 year olds, but it will not see anybody with an intellectual disability. I stand to be corrected in that regard, but that is my experience. The person who came to me in that crisis situation was told he would have to wait at least one year because the case was being sent to adult services in Beaumont. Meanwhile, this individual's family must cope with a mental health issue alongside an intellectual disability. I can cite several such cases. I have also dealt with a case involving an adult child who has serious behavioural problems and who needs residential care because the parents are elderly. Nothing has changed in the last two years. I welcome the benefits, but let us have value for money.
I welcome the Little Things campaign. In preparing for this debate, I visited the website www.yourmentalhealth.ie. The map on that website makes it clear that services are clustered around the cities. In rural areas, there are no services. Again, this is where transport is important. Mental health issues do not arise solely in the big cities. Often they arise in the most rural of places.
I also spoke to several counsellors and other people who work in the area of mental health in advance of the debate. I told them we are singing the same song every time we have this debate but that I wanted to investigate the issues arising. One interesting issue that arose was that two counsellors told me separately that service users - I hate that term - report that the generic medicines now being prescribed do not offer the same benefits as prescribed named medication. I thought it noteworthy that these two individuals, who come from different areas, reported that the medication did not appear to be working as well as expected.
The most effective deterrent to suicide is removing access to the means. More than 30,000 people took part in Assist training programmes last year. I spoke to somebody who works in this area about the programme. The individuals who take part in the training do not have to commit to working in the area of suicide. The cost of the training is €300 per person, but we have no documented evidence that it is helping to reduce suicide rates.