and given to who? At least with psychiatrists you are dealing with a professsional. There’s a real danger of giving serious power over to quacks if they’re not central to policy.
What does this even mean? Do they want chiropractors providing mental health services? How about some reiki for your bipolar depression? Be grand.
(Source – know someone who worked closely with this particular situation and we were discussing the awful state of mental health services)
​
There was a fella up on the Rice bridge in waterford. Must have been there an hour and a half with gardai and negotiators trying to talk him down, fire services, ambulance – just a massive deployment.
Finally they get the fella off the bridge. Take him to the garda station. Gardai have a doctor come out to assess him. Doctor says that in spite of the fact that he was an hour and a half on the bridge, and that he has done this multiple times before, and has a history of suicide attempts and self harm, that he will not be involuntarily committed and just gives him a letter for the pysch dep in university hospital waterford.
Gardai bring him to UHW. Hes a voluntary patient. Doctor interviews him and offers him some medication. Man refuses, and refuses any further treatment. Free to go.
Fella just walked out of the hospital about a half hour after he arrived. Gardai can do absolutely nothing to stop him as he has been assessed by multiple healthcare professionals and they are happy to let him walk away, and since he is voluntary they cant even call the gardai to stall him while they send an ambulance to bring him back. Now the Gardai just have to sit back and wait for the inevitable.
This story is repeated daily around the country with all sorts of people with varying levels of mental health difficulty. The wariness on behalf of doctors to involuntarily submit people who are clearly a danger themselves and the inadequate services available in hospitals are a massive issue. It’s not even the their fault. They are only following the rules and trying to keep their jobs, and help the people they can help.
It is a massive, massive problem when if you are talked down off a bridge on multiple occassions absolutely nothing is done to ensure you gain access to adequate mental health services, even when all the people involved want for you to receive them. The Doctor doesn’t want to be sued for breaching the fellas human rights, the Gardai can only follow the procedure under the mental health act and the law around detention, and the doctors and hospital staff can only do the same. Every step of the way is a failure, when everybody wants to help. Its a fucking disaster.
“*Mac MacLachlan is professor of psychology and social inclusion at Maynooth University”*
Academic with no medical degree wants to take Mental Health services out of the hands of people who do.
In all seriousness, I do think there are issues with how mental health services function (or rather don’t function) in this country. But both nursing and psychology are full of extremely dubious borderline alternative medicine thinking.
Look at the amount of psychologists in Ireland connected to far right and religious extremism. We need better mental health services.
I went to the doctor suicidal and I was given a piece of paper with 2 Australian websites I couldn’t afford the membership too to get help from.
A week later I tried to take my life and was quickly discharged from st. Luke’s hospital once I was patched up with no help after I left and a nice bill I refuse to pay to this day..
It’s a pretty sad reflection of our ‘rich’ country with its supposed ‘successful economy’ that no government has provided anything approaching adequate mental health services.
And that mental health is seen as somehow a ‘nice to have’ health service compared to ‘real’ health issues.
So much easier for GPs to dish out medication at the drop of a hat. Medication which in some cases (eg SSRIs for depression) recent research questions the efficacy of. Meanwhile they will drag their heels on new approaches like psychedelics.
The government doesn’t have to deal with it and big pharma makes a few quid. Everyone’s happy.
The CAHMS review referred to was into one area of the country and it seems a bit misleading to use that to ground findings about the entire system.
Psychologists are just people who couldn’t make it as psychics.
What is a consultant nurse lmao
There are some good truths in the article. However the idea that, psychiatrist only think in a medical model rather than a biopsychosocial model is a complete strawman arguement that hasn’t actually been true since the 90s.
If you want to begin to solve the mental health crisis in this country finance and staff it properly. WHO recommend 12% of health budget (Ireland current 5.6%).
Last year only 136/485 consultant psychiatry positions were not filled or only filled by a locum (temporary) basis. 1/3 waiting over a year to be seen in camhs.
If this was any other area of medicine there would have been absolute uproar and action.
I’ve posted this before and I will again.
The government provide zero help to people trying to break into the field of psychology. One of the main things that help is the springboard system that provides subsidised degrees and masters courses. There isn’t one course in psychology on the list but if you want to go into tech or some other random course there’s loads.
I have a bachelor’s in psychology and I can’t even find entry level grunt work to help me improve my experience.
One of the main reason psychiatrists lead mental health teams is because human rights accords specify to have illnesses diagnosed by doctors only, and they essentially gatekeep for the rest of the team as to who gets a service and who doesn’t. Anyone else leading a team would be open to challenge in court as to their qualifications and expertise to do so, especially seeing as these teams look after a cohort that often need medication and hospitalisation, and often have other medical complaints.
In practice, this is also meant to stop people being labelled as mentally ill for political or social reasons, and to limit WWII-style abuses.
Doctors specialising in mental health (eg psychiatrists) undergo lengthy training in order to be able to make such diagnoses, and are regulated exactly like other doctors.
I don’t see a better system. The issue, as in most of healthcare, is actually recruitment and retention. The figures on understaffing in mental health teams are frightening.
Psychiatry is not the enemy. Id defer to them, They are the experts.
14 comments
and given to who? At least with psychiatrists you are dealing with a professsional. There’s a real danger of giving serious power over to quacks if they’re not central to policy.
What does this even mean? Do they want chiropractors providing mental health services? How about some reiki for your bipolar depression? Be grand.
(Source – know someone who worked closely with this particular situation and we were discussing the awful state of mental health services)
​
There was a fella up on the Rice bridge in waterford. Must have been there an hour and a half with gardai and negotiators trying to talk him down, fire services, ambulance – just a massive deployment.
Finally they get the fella off the bridge. Take him to the garda station. Gardai have a doctor come out to assess him. Doctor says that in spite of the fact that he was an hour and a half on the bridge, and that he has done this multiple times before, and has a history of suicide attempts and self harm, that he will not be involuntarily committed and just gives him a letter for the pysch dep in university hospital waterford.
Gardai bring him to UHW. Hes a voluntary patient. Doctor interviews him and offers him some medication. Man refuses, and refuses any further treatment. Free to go.
Fella just walked out of the hospital about a half hour after he arrived. Gardai can do absolutely nothing to stop him as he has been assessed by multiple healthcare professionals and they are happy to let him walk away, and since he is voluntary they cant even call the gardai to stall him while they send an ambulance to bring him back. Now the Gardai just have to sit back and wait for the inevitable.
This story is repeated daily around the country with all sorts of people with varying levels of mental health difficulty. The wariness on behalf of doctors to involuntarily submit people who are clearly a danger themselves and the inadequate services available in hospitals are a massive issue. It’s not even the their fault. They are only following the rules and trying to keep their jobs, and help the people they can help.
It is a massive, massive problem when if you are talked down off a bridge on multiple occassions absolutely nothing is done to ensure you gain access to adequate mental health services, even when all the people involved want for you to receive them. The Doctor doesn’t want to be sued for breaching the fellas human rights, the Gardai can only follow the procedure under the mental health act and the law around detention, and the doctors and hospital staff can only do the same. Every step of the way is a failure, when everybody wants to help. Its a fucking disaster.
“*Mac MacLachlan is professor of psychology and social inclusion at Maynooth University”*
Academic with no medical degree wants to take Mental Health services out of the hands of people who do.
In all seriousness, I do think there are issues with how mental health services function (or rather don’t function) in this country. But both nursing and psychology are full of extremely dubious borderline alternative medicine thinking.
Look at the amount of psychologists in Ireland connected to far right and religious extremism. We need better mental health services.
I went to the doctor suicidal and I was given a piece of paper with 2 Australian websites I couldn’t afford the membership too to get help from.
A week later I tried to take my life and was quickly discharged from st. Luke’s hospital once I was patched up with no help after I left and a nice bill I refuse to pay to this day..
It’s a pretty sad reflection of our ‘rich’ country with its supposed ‘successful economy’ that no government has provided anything approaching adequate mental health services.
And that mental health is seen as somehow a ‘nice to have’ health service compared to ‘real’ health issues.
So much easier for GPs to dish out medication at the drop of a hat. Medication which in some cases (eg SSRIs for depression) recent research questions the efficacy of. Meanwhile they will drag their heels on new approaches like psychedelics.
The government doesn’t have to deal with it and big pharma makes a few quid. Everyone’s happy.
The CAHMS review referred to was into one area of the country and it seems a bit misleading to use that to ground findings about the entire system.
Psychologists are just people who couldn’t make it as psychics.
What is a consultant nurse lmao
There are some good truths in the article. However the idea that, psychiatrist only think in a medical model rather than a biopsychosocial model is a complete strawman arguement that hasn’t actually been true since the 90s.
If you want to begin to solve the mental health crisis in this country finance and staff it properly. WHO recommend 12% of health budget (Ireland current 5.6%).
Last year only 136/485 consultant psychiatry positions were not filled or only filled by a locum (temporary) basis. 1/3 waiting over a year to be seen in camhs.
If this was any other area of medicine there would have been absolute uproar and action.
I’ve posted this before and I will again.
The government provide zero help to people trying to break into the field of psychology. One of the main things that help is the springboard system that provides subsidised degrees and masters courses. There isn’t one course in psychology on the list but if you want to go into tech or some other random course there’s loads.
I have a bachelor’s in psychology and I can’t even find entry level grunt work to help me improve my experience.
One of the main reason psychiatrists lead mental health teams is because human rights accords specify to have illnesses diagnosed by doctors only, and they essentially gatekeep for the rest of the team as to who gets a service and who doesn’t. Anyone else leading a team would be open to challenge in court as to their qualifications and expertise to do so, especially seeing as these teams look after a cohort that often need medication and hospitalisation, and often have other medical complaints.
In practice, this is also meant to stop people being labelled as mentally ill for political or social reasons, and to limit WWII-style abuses.
Doctors specialising in mental health (eg psychiatrists) undergo lengthy training in order to be able to make such diagnoses, and are regulated exactly like other doctors.
I don’t see a better system. The issue, as in most of healthcare, is actually recruitment and retention. The figures on understaffing in mental health teams are frightening.
Psychiatry is not the enemy. Id defer to them, They are the experts.