Funding for the mental health sector needs to be doubled immediately if services are to be brought up to acceptable standards, the Mental Health Commission said yesterday.
Despite the funding needs, commission chairman Dr John Owens said money allocated to mental health as a proportion of the overall health budget has fallen from 10.6 per cent in 1990 to 6.8 per cent last year.
He said current funding levels were inadequate and varied dramatically within different parts of the State.
For example, he said, the amount spent on mentally ill patients per head of population ranged from around €300 in the East Galway area to around €56 in Dublin's South Western Area Health Board.
While funding needed to be increased, there was evidence that existing funding was not being appropriately spent, Dr Owens said.
"We are not getting the quality of service we should get for the amount of money we are spending ... If we move from institutional settings to community care, we would get a much better return," he said.
The inspector for mental health services, Dr Teresa Carey, said funding shortages meant specialist services were "seriously underdeveloped".
She said additional revenue should be spent on developing community-based health teams, particularly in the area of services for children, adolescents, offenders and people with intellectual disabilities.
Dr Carey said studies in Northern Ireland suggested the total economic cost of mental illness in the Republic was €11 billion, while funding for the mental health sector amounted to €680 million last year.
Dr Carey said the availability of in-patient units for children and adolescents was "wholly inadequate," with current estimates suggesting that around 120 beds were needed immediately.
Services for offenders were also inadequate, Dr Carey added.
The Central Mental Hospital was the only designated forensic unit available nationally and accommodation there was of a "totally unacceptable standard".
Additional services were required for homeless people with mental illness, autistic people and for the early detection of psychosis.
