Sir, – I am a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and have been working in Limerick for the past 15 years.
I am concerned about the denial of the existence of severe and enduring mental illness that is creeping into mental healthcare at all levels.
Denial operates to prevent us acknowledging and tackling mental illness in our communities and prevents decision-makers allocating sufficient resources to enable us all to do so.
Denial operates in many ways. Individual patients are sometimes unable to admit to themselves that they are ill. This causes lack of compliance and leads to the need for coercive treatment.
Denial operates in families, where the stigma of psychiatric illness results in families failing to seek help for their loved ones at an early stage in the course of their illness.
Denial operates in the HSE, where a manager has told me that my patients “need a good kick in the arse”.
Psychiatry is repeatedly under-resourced and yet budgets are under spent.
I continue to see young people daily whose lives are blighted not only by the illnesses they are unfortunate enough to suffer from, but also by the ignorance, stigma and denial they face in their journey to recovery.
Investment in child and adolescent mental health makes economic, social and human sense. Let’s do it.– Yours, etc,
Dr YVONNE BEGLEY,
O’Connell Street,
Limerick.