Madam, - When I buy my Irish Times each day, I now turn first to this page, and I am again astonished not to see a single letter echoing the concerns expressed in February by Amnesty International, and then in March by the Irish Psychiatric Association, about the state of our mental health service.
Both organisations released extremely disconcerting accounts of that system in two reports covered extensively by your publication.
If, as is commonly accepted, one in four people in Ireland will develop a mental health problem at some point in their lives, and one extrapolates that figure out to all those who must be indirectly affected by our abysmal mental health care - families, carers, friends - it seems that not a person in the land could be undisturbed by those reports.
The high rate of hospitalisation in Ireland for mental health problems because of poor community care, and the general unavailability of therapies other than medication , is alarming.
The fact that only 7 per cent of our health budget is allocated to mental health is extraordinary. Even then, that the most vulnerable sections of our society - prisoners, children, the homeless - and the most deprived areas of the country receive the worst services is outrageous.
Is the apparent unwillingness to put pen to paper to express disgust and indignation at this state of affairs somehow due to the stigma that still envelops mental illness?
Does the fact that writers' names and addresses are - quite correctly - published dissuade people from putting their heads above the parapet? Do they fear that they may be seen as, God forbid, a "service user"?
The alternative is unthinkable: that people simply couldn't care less that our mental health services are so appalling. Whichever is closer to the truth, it is hardly surprising that mental health is seen by our Government as politically unimportant. - Yours etc.
J. LYONS,
Garville Court,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.