Amnesty: Mental health needs the whole of Government to act

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Wednesday February 24, 2010 19:08

by Amnesty International - Ireland - Amnesty International

The Government must adopt a coordinated approach if it is serious about improving its track record on mental health, according to a report launched today (24/02/10) by Amnesty International Ireland. The Missing Link: coordinated Government action on mental health was launched by Minister for Mental Health and Disability John Moloney TD at a press conference this morning.

Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland said: “If the Government really wants to reduce the reliance on inpatient mental health care it must recognise the crucial role departments outside health must play.
“In addition to fully comprehensive community mental health services, other basic supports are needed so that people with mental health problems can lead full lives.
“Being able to get work, to continue studying and keep a home are recognised aids to recovery for people with mental health problems. Access to these basic human rights can even mean the difference between needing acute inpatient care or not.
“The Missing Link explains clearly why departments including Social and Family Affairs, Education and Science, Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Environment, Heritage, and Local Government, must act on mental health. It also offers workable solutions that are easily achievable even in this difficult financial climate.

“This report has its basis in real lives – we have made these recommendations because we have been told by people who have direct experience that the mental health services are only a small part of the solution.

“There are very real barriers stopping people with mental health problems being able to live a full life in their communities, and these must be broken down. The failure of Government departments to act is causing unnecessary additional pain and hardship to those in crisis.”

Mr O’Gorman added: “In the current economic climate it is even more important to act urgently. On a human level, increased pressures and stresses are leading to increasing mental health problems. In addition, the lack of coordinated action is financially irresponsible.

“The Government’s mental health policy, A Vision for Change, was published in 2006 and set out clear recommendations for a number of key departments, yet there has been little progress. Departments must take this policy seriously and get on with its implementation.”

International good practice guidance makes clear that mental health should be an interdepartmental concern. The World Health Organisation has stated that an effective approach to mental health requires the involvement of the education, employment, housing and social services sectors, as well as the criminal justice system.

The Missing Link makes specific recommendations for key Government departments, but also includes some overall recommendations, that the Government must:
- commit to prioritising mental health and ensure that all departments implement A Vision for Change;
- ensure that the sectoral plans under the National Disability Strategy have a specific mental health focus;
- ensure regular coordination across all relevant departments under the leadership of the Office for Disability and Mental Health.

Mr O’Gorman added: “Separately, these actions can make a real difference to the lives of people who have experienced a mental health problem. But implemented together, they could help to ensure that people experiencing mental health problems can participate as full members of Irish society and help Ireland keep its promise to its citizens to recognise their right to the highest possible standard of mental health.

“People with mental health problems want more than to recover their health; they want to recover their lives.”

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Comments (4 of 4)

What does domestic health budget have to do with an international human rights organisation?

by Saoirsí

Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:53

I'm sorry to be blunt: but what exactly does the health budget allocation of a first world nation have to do with an international human rights organisation?

It's not that this isn't a valid or important issue for domestic public policy debate - but why on earth should this be a focus of an organisation whose historic core mission has been the release of prisoners of conscience, prevention of torture etc?

Again, I'm not trying to be insulting to Amnesty, but I just think over the past few years they have completely lost the plot in Ireland: this a country with extraordinary renditions conducted through it's airports with the complicity of the government; with a lack of public accountability of it's policing and intelligence services - and abuses of the system by same; the threats against personal privacy, political criticism, dissent etc. Where is Amnesty? Apparently, they are now a domestic health services pressure group, to encourage better quality care, in a comparatively well-off, white english-speaking european country.

What has this got to do with "hardcore" international human rights, considering the abuses of same abroad, and the the apparent neglect of actual active state abuses in out own country - as opposed to a policy debate on resource allocation? I'm sorry, but there is something terribly middle-class, navel-gazing, and wishy-washy about this compared to Amnesty's traditional activities in the past.

Full Spectrum

by Mark C

Fri Feb 26, 2010 09:37

Saoirsi,

A number of years ago, at an annual convention, Amnesty members voted to change their modus operandi from 'just' the prisoner idea to what was term 'full spectrum human rights'. This means that they are campaigning on human rights right across the board.

For many, yourself included probably, mental health issues are human rights issues, so Amnesty is campaigning on this issue - as it is against FGM, blood diamonds, and more.

discrimination

by nora boyle - mental health action

Sun Feb 28, 2010 16:51

saoirsi ,you are wrong to suggest that the suffering of mental health patients is not important enough for Amnesty to bother about.
perhaps you are unaware of what goes on in mental hospitals- forced straight jacketing, forced removal of clothing, forced incarcaration, forced injections and huge doses of masses of experimental drugs, forced electric shock 'therapy'' , forced isolation 'therapy' (actually punishment for the purposes of disipline and control).
To say Amnesty should have better things to do is either denial of the horrors inflicted of society's most vunerable people or discrimination similiar to racism. Unfortunatly this kind of thinking is widespread, that activists should only care about prisoners in guatonomo and treat other irish people like 5th class citizens.

Thanks for your measured responses...

Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:37

... to my admittedly blunt criticism.

But again, it's not a question of dismissing mental health concerns as a valid topic of public and political debate.

It's a question regarding the dangers of "rights inflation" - the devaluation of human rights as a category of human concern, by applying it so broadly that it loses it's special moral, philosophical, and political power for motivation.

Nora: if the active, coercive abuse of mental health patients/incarcerated were the issue, I would have no problem with this.

But it's clear from the article that this is not what this is about: this is about more resource allocation for better health services, in what is a comparatively affluent Western society. Colm O'Gorman already had a special interest group to lobby on this. I'm sorry, but I simply don't see how such a budgetary and domestic policy debate - no matter how valid - relates to the issue of human rights. Simply invoking "human rights" doesn't make it so. One could equally invoke it in the context of food, housing, a clean environment, better schools and so on. But the end process in all of this is to make human rights apply to everything that is a political concern - and then the problem is, what is so special about human rights?

And this has a potential direct negative impact on important areas such as I touched on - which both of you ignored, by the way, and which I am arguing ought to be the important core of concern. What about CIA rendition flights of "enemy non-combatants" not subject to Geneva or Civil Rights protection being flown through Irish airspace, on their way to be tortured by third party governments? What about the abuse of the policing and criminal investigation system to invade privacy online or through telecommunications? What about the lack of democratic accountability and oversight of police, intelligence gathering (Ireland has not even a department rep. to report to the Dáil, unlike other countries), family courts - or mental health services? What about the criminalising of opinion or thought - consider the ridiculously broad anti-blasphemy bill.

Those are just some examples. In addition, things like these are concrete, can have defined solutions - or at least defined problems. Things become considerably less concrete, and less defined as the issues are broadened and borders are blurred - and much more subject to personal and political vagaries of opinion.

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Amnesty: Mental health needs the whole of Government to act

Comments (4 of 4)