Many families receive little help when they need to get a seriously mentally ill family member to a psychiatric hospital, according to the voluntary organisation Schizophrenia Ireland.
The organisation has also criticised the shortage of community-based services which could help people with psychiatric conditions to avoid hospitalisation in the first place.
Only legislation giving people with mental illnesses a legal right to assessment and to suitable services will redress the situation, Schizophrenia Ireland said.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland (PNAI), which has a ban on escorting involuntary patients in Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Offaly and Wicklow to hospital, says it is optimistic it will be able to resolve the problem in talks with the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin.
But it has warned that a Statewide ban could also be introduced because of its frustration at the lack of progress since it first imposed the ban in 1993.
The Inspector of Mental Hospitals, Dr Dermot Walsh, said in his recent report that seriously ill patients were unable to obtain treatment.
This, he said, was because of situations in which neither psychiatric nurses nor gardai would escort seriously ill patients to hospital where this was necessary. He described the situation as "intolerable".
The PNAI imposed the ban on escorting involuntary patients to hospital after three nurses were stabbed when trying to escort a patient to St Ita's in Portrane in 1993.
Ms Orla O'Neill, director of Schizophrenia Ireland, said the issue was one of the most frequently raised topics by callers to its helpline. Family doctors are extremely reluctant to sign people into a psychiatric hospital, she said. "This is very good in a way," she says, "but if a person is very ill it may not be in their best interests or in that of their family."
The problems regarding escorts by nurses and gardai had led to situations where families had to put a seriously ill member into a car and drive to a hospital which could be a long distance away.
Ms O'Neill said there was a need to enshrine the right to assessment and to suitable treatment and services in legislation.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform said yesterday it was discussing the matter with the Department of Health and Children in the context of the Mental Health Bill.
The PNAI said the approach of gardai to escorting people to psychiatric hospitals varies from county to county. The Garda Press Office says gardai were only obliged to provide escorts where a person of unsound mind has been certified by a doctor as needing an escort.
"Person of unsound mind" is an infrequently used classification which does not apply to most people admitted to hospitals, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
weblink: http://www.iol.ie/lucia (Schizophrenia Ireland)