Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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167. To ask the Minister for Health to outline the treatment services in place to address comorbidity of substance misuse and mental health issues. [13860/16]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The major responsibility for care of people with addiction lies outside the mental health system. These services have their own funding structure within Primary and Continuing Community Care (PCCC) in the HSE. The responsibility of community mental health services is to respond to the needs of people with both problems of addiction and serious mental health disorders.

Acute presentations by service users with co-morbid mental health and addiction problems will be mostly seen by General Adult Community Mental Health Teams, who offer both addiction counselling expertise and mental health intervention as part of an integrated care plan. These teams are also be responsible for linking these service users to community-based recovery and support programmes as part of facilitating full community re-integration.

The standard practice for patients presenting to Emergency Departments with mental health issues who have also misused substances is that the mental health assessment would be postponed until the individual is no longer intoxicated and is medically fit to engage in the assessment process. In the interim, the patient remains under the care of the Hospital Emergency Department Team.

The HSE Mental Health Directorate has plans to implement a new ‘Dual Diagnosis’ clinical programme in 2016 addressing those service users with Mental Health difficulties and Substance Misuse. The overarching aim of the national programmes is to standardise quality evidence based practice across the Mental Health Services. The Programmes bring together clinical disciplines and enable them to share innovative solutions to deliver greater benefits to every user of HSE services. The Programmes are based on three main objectives:

1. To improve the quality of care we deliver to all users of HSE services;

2. To improve access to all services; and

3. To improve cost effectiveness.