New Government policies are urgently needed to ensure comprehensive treatment and care for schizophrenics, according to a group which campaigns for those with the illness.
Schizophrenia Ireland said up to 15 per cent of those with the disorder commit suicide and the "paucity of support" for sufferers was not helping the situation.
"The Department of Health's policy is based on a document drawn up in 1984. It is woefully outdated," said the group's director, Mr John Saunders.
"We need a new policy for a new century to ensure that those with schizophrenia are not kept on the margins of society."
He was speaking yesterday at the launch of Towards Recovery, a joint publication of Schizophrenia Ireland and the Irish Psychiatric Association.
It outlines 18 principles of good practice in the treatment, care, rehabilitation and recovery of people with the illness and related mental disorders.
Mr Saunders said current services were hugely inconsistent between health board regions. He also raised human rights concerns about the high level of involuntary committals in comparison to the rest of Europe.
Admission rates in the State average 100 for every 100,000 people aged over 16. That compares to 80 per 100,000 in the North and only 25 in Italy.
More than 2,000 people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals against their will in the Republic every year. The report was launched to coincide with Lucia Week, Schizophrenia Ireland's national awareness week, which started on Monday. It is named after James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who was diagnosed with the illness in her early 20s.
Among the principles recommended in the report are the early diagnosis of schizophrenia to improve the chances of recovery and the opportunity for those with the illness to play a leading role in their own treatment.
It stresses that the "privacy and dignity" of hospital patients should always be respected, and calls for involuntary admission to psychiatric hospitals only as a last resort. It urges the establishment of residential accommodation providing support for those with the illness making the transition to independence.
Last year, 132 people used Schizophrenia Ireland's counselling service in Dublin, an increase of 21 per cent from last year. The organisation's help-line also received 548 calls, almost two-thirds of which were from the Eastern Regional Health Authority area.
Mr Saunders said it was vital that "the vulnerable" and mental health services did not suffer if there were any cut-backs in public spending.
The report was launched by Sen Feargal Quinn.
He was shocked to hear details of conditions that "would have disgraced the 19th century". Old buildings were falling down and "clinical methods and practices fell far short of what modern medicine should lead us to expect".
"For centuries, we have as a people shut our minds to the problem of mental health and we have done a very good job at sweeping it under the carpet," he said.