People with an intellectual disability still in psychiatric hospitals 25 years after Government policy said this must stop – Inclusion Ireland

Government must urgently address the provision of mental health services to people with an intellectual disability, according to the third report of the Independent Monitoring Group (published yesterday Monday 20th April) on the Government’s mental health policy A Vision for Change. Inclusion Ireland says mental health services for people with an intellectual disability are under-resourced and inadequate.

The 2006 document A Vision for Change said people with an intellectual disability should be cared for separately to people with a mental illness, but 319 people with an intellectual disability still live in psychiatric hospitals. Government policy first stated people should be cared for separately in the 1984 Government policy document Planning for the Future, but 25 years later the practice is ongoing and has dire consequences for the people involved.

A Mental Health Commission report published earlier this month (3rd April) said long stay patients at St. Luke’s Hospital in Clonmel included residents with an intellectual disability and residents with mental illness, with no separate accommodation for the two groups. Despite six residents with an intellectual disability leaving the hospital in 2006, 29 people remain.

Inclusion Ireland CEO Deirdre Carroll says:

“The Mental Health Commission’s Report into St. Luke’s was very worrying on a number of levels, particularly reports that residents were prescribed long term treatments with benzodiazepines and that appropriate resources and expertise to deal with people with an intellectual disability is not in place. There is also no therapy provision or interventions as envisioned in A Vision for Change and staff have little or no formal training in intellectual disability.

“It is totally unacceptable that 25 years after Government policy clearly stated the need for separate facilities for people with an intellectual disability and people with a mental illness, over three hundred people with an intellectual disability remain in psychiatric hospitals. Three years ago, A Vision for Change also stated that this practice would end. It is simply not good enough that Government policy can state something so serious is unacceptable, and 25 years later it is still happening. The Independent Monitoring Group on A Vision for Change said that they recognise the difficulties facing the HSE in the current economic climate, but ‘this does not in any way diminish the HSE’s responsibility to implement A Vision for Change’. The Government’s responsibility to protect vulnerable people in society must always remain to the fore.”

ENDS

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