Sir, – In Dr Jacky Jones's "Are health professionals paid too much or not enough?" (Second Opinion, Health + Family, July 16th), she makes a simplistic comparison between the work of psychiatrists and chiropodists that displays an inherent judgment about how we should judge improvements for patients with mental health issues.
Success and progress within the psychiatric field hinges on a whole range of interdependent factors – probably more so than in another other branch of medicine – including patient, condition, environment, social factors and the resources made available, most of which are beyond the control of the doctors and other healthcare professionals.
To reduce this emotive and complicated arena to such a facile argument is unhelpful to discussions surrounding mental health, if not damaging. – Yours etc,
RICHARD SCRIVEN,
Browningstown Park,
Ballinlough,
Cork.
Sir, – Dr Jacky Jones writes of “psychiatrists treating patients for depression for 20 years with no improvement in mental health”. This disseminates dangerously wrong information about depression and its treatment, stigmatises people with depression by implying a doomed prognosis, misrepresents psychiatry and unfairly characterises psychiatrists.
Quite an achievement in a little more than 10 words. – Yours, etc,
Dr AISLING DENIHAN,
Kennedy Road,
Navan,
Co Meath.