Chrysalis

2012 is a very important year, Kathleen Lynch TD, our straight talking and good hearted Junior Minister is reviewing the Mental Health Act 2001. Alan Shatter TD, our Justice Minister, is looking to introduce ‘Capacity’ legislation. Both of these pieces of work will have a significant and long standing effect on Irish mental health and for those unfortunate enough to have to use the system. If we do not get these two pieces of work right we may not have the chance to change them again for a decade.
The proposed Capacity Legislation will have wide ranging effects on the lives of those living with the normality of madness. Emotional distress, without sounding to philosophical, is a disease of the soul not of the brain. Madness does not degenerate brain function in the same way as say Alzheimer’s does and so should not be dealt with in the same way. Capacity deals with our ability to make decisions, it does not deal with the merit or otherwise of those decisions, and we would argue that at no point does someone with emotional problems loose the capacity to make decisions.

The starting point for many of the opinions that will have been submitted to the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Defence will be that capacity is lost, a position that we argue does not apply to mental health. If this is to happen, that this legislation is drawn up from this starting point of the ‘loss’ of capacity then the review of the Mental Health Act 2001 will be coloured and the basic human rights of the mad community will again be ignored.

Madness may cause an individual to make poor decisions, life itself can and does cause people to make poor decisions, but what cannot be argued is that those with emotional problems have lost their decision making capacity.

We need to develop a service that will help users come to the best decision for them, the individual, while also respecting their decision to disagree. This will require a sea change in thinking from legislators, the services and you the general public. It will take courage of thought and conviction. The easy route is to take a compromise position, tick the box for compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and move on. That would be a ‘poor decision’ and would lead me to ask have our decision makers the ‘capacity’ to decide on the future treatment of those within the mental health services.

There are no easy roads in this area, nor should there be. But we should all be cognisant of the very busy roads our mental health services are heading into. The financial crisis of the past number of years, growing unemployment and debt will only increase the need for these services and if they are not equipped and designed to deal with this we are heading toward many tragedies.

Stress, mental illness, mental ill health or whatever you want to call it is not a disease it is simply our reaction to emotional situations that happen to every one of us every day of our lives. Labeling human behavior is the simple solution that allows society pigeon hole us to make it easier to treat. Mad Pride Ireland has started a campaign to highlight the flaws in the current approach of our health systems toward the treatment of mental health issues.
Mental Health systems both here in Ireland and abroad rely on a collection of labels, labels that allow them to take a person who is suffering and put them in a diagnostic box. Once they have them in that diagnostic box they are then treated based on their label not on their value as a person. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4 (DSM 4) is the dictionary for all these labels so easily attributed to emotional problems we all suffer in our daily lives. As we continue to label human behavior, the labels will thrive and the individuals will suffer.
If labeling allows mental health professionals to treat the diagnosis but not the individual our simple question is this; is it possible to treat all people with the same ‘pill’ or ‘treatment’ without taking into account their different upbringings, lives and emotional reactions?
Mad Pride Ireland will be launching a new radio campaign this month to highlight the negative aspects of assigning labels to human behavior. This campaign is a tongue in cheek look at the situation. Mad Pride is calling on the public to join with them in compiling a list of ‘labels’ that they want to add to the DSM 5. People are asked to submit their label on our Facebook page.
As part of this campaign, there will be a meeting on Saturday 14 April at 2pm to show off the newly created labels to the world. A photo shoot will take place at the meeting point which is at the entrance of the English market on Princes Street, Cork.
For more information on this or any of Mad Pride Ireland’s other campaigns please log on to http://www.madprideireland.ie