Chrysalis

Here is a recent blog I wrote for Mad Pride Ireland http://www.madprideireland.ie asking some serious questions about wastage in the Irish voluntary sector and if we need some radical changes in our approach to mental health in general.

So we have yet another report telling us about suicide in young men. It tells us about what we are doing wrong by these young men, why they are choosing suicide as an option and what we ‘should be’ doing. Before I start let me say this; I am not against research, I am not against studying and monitoring the development of our society to allow us to adapt and change to ensure we have the best society we can. I am however against the continued commissioning and reliance on these reports to justify the continuation and enhancement of the failed systems we have in place in this area.
I have written in the past about the folly of funding over 300 different groups in the area of suicide. I have written about the need to have a singular body akin to the Road Safety Authority to co-ordinate our approach at a national level to suicide. The report issued today by Men’s Health Forum Ireland is not of itself offensive or untimely and not without merit. Why it irks me relates more to the politicians who will welcome and laud it and then ignore it and the policy wonks in the background who will place it on a shelf next to the myriad of other reports on this subject before they sit down and discuss who they will fund next to produce yet another report to ensure the status-quo…
Cynical much?
Well I have had a lot of exposure to this. Repeated ministers have travelled the same route of commissioning reports, assembling expert groups while ignoring the real issues. The Mental Health Act 2001 is under review now for over two years. Work on this began a pace when Kathleen Lynch came to office but when it looked like the consultation process was throwing up some uncomfortable conclusions on the moral and legal elements of the Act an expert groups was immediately assembled and tasked to start their work in 2013. They will report in 2014, this will then have to be discussed and no doubt will spawn an ‘inter-departmental all party committee’ discussion a la Sir Humphrey. Translated – nothing will happen to change our approach from the medical model to a more human approach with the individual at its core.
At the end of last year we saw the €35 million of ‘ring-fenced’ funds for a Vision For Change subsumed into the HSE budget over-run. Kathleen Lynch was quick to calm our nerves by telling us this was not a cut in mental health funding because, wait for it, the funds had yet to be allocated to her so essentially she did not have to give back what she hadn’t yet received. Sorry Minister but a rose by any other name. Minister Lynch is one of the good ones, she has a unique style and genuine warmth but it seems that the system is not for turning. Mental Health is an industry beyond big pharma and the medical model. It employs many hundreds of people in groups across the country all working with what I assume are genuine intentions toward making things better but I am sorry it is not working.
This will not make me, or Mad Pride Ireland very popular (we stopped worrying about that a long time ago) but we waste too much money on the voluntary sector. Government needs to change its approach; it needs to be more ruthless. Groups in this area should have to compete for government funding to allow them to provide their services through a tender process and they should be funded well to do so. We shouldn’t have over 300 groups working on suicide, we shouldn’t have hundreds of mental health groups with full staff, offices and CEO’s all working on the same topic. Don’t forget we already have the HSE, yes the HSE. A target for anger and dismay by most of us there are a lot of really hard working and visionary staff working in the mental health area of the HSE that we completely underutilise because of our deference to the voluntary sector.
We need to rationalise and co-ordinate, value for money is important but what is more so is offering a less noisy environment for those in need. An individual dealing with emotional distress is under enough pressure they do not need the added stress of filtering through the numerous voluntary agencies being thrown at them.
Do I believe this will happen; no. Do I hope it will happen; yes. But then again as I have said before I am an old romantic.