Mental health services report makes grim reading

The ‘damning’ review of mental health services in Roscommon – which covers swathes of East Galway –  highlights the stupidity of closing the psychiatric beds at Ballinasloe, according to a local TD.

Fianna Fáil’s Galway East Deputy Anne Rabbitte said the external review into mental health services in Roscommon, “gives proof beyond any doubt that the decision to close Ballinasloe psychiatric beds was the wrong one.”

She said the report, which lists a litany of failures, including at management level, highlights why suicide is so prevalent in Galway and Roscommon.

“We have a hospital in the city, University Hospital Galway, that is bursting at the seams and cannot cope because of overcrowding. And people who are suicidal shouldn’t be going through the Emergency Department, anyway, but that’s another day’s work. And then you have this report into Roscommon, which is damning of management. Is it any wonder suicide rates are so high? There are failures in mental health services all over,” said Deputy Rabbitte.

The HSE-commissioned review into mental health services in Roscommon, which was undertaken after allegations of improper sexual contacts at a facility in the county, has found there were systemic failings in reporting and managing incidents of sexualised behaviour.

Though the report relates to Roscommon, its services include large swathes of County Galway including: Portumna, Eyrecourt, Kilreekle, Laurencetown, Kiltormer, New Inn and Ballymacward.

The review found that mental health services in the area were marked by a culture of blame, control and negativity.

Deputy Rabbitte said she was neither shocked nor surprised by the findings – she foresaw it. “I don’t protest. I’ve only ever done it once, and that was in protest at the closure of beds at Ballinasloe. This report absolutely proves that that was the wrong decision. They do not have the management and structures in place in Roscommon to deal with this. Can you imagine, some of the management did not co-operate with the review. This is unbelievable,” she said.

The report found that the overriding concern of staff, carers and service users who were interviewed was “patients and families in Roscommon were not receiving 21st century mental health services as there appeared to be an inadequate emphasis on the quality and safety of care delivery.”

The review found that “multidisciplinary team working (MDT), the lynchpin of modern mental health services, was severely eroded in Roscommon, with fractured relationships within the Area Management Team (AMT), within the Roscommon teams and between a number of professionals and key consultant medical staff.”

It found there were “poor line management arrangements” and “Leadership at a number of levels appeared to be ineffective.”

“The majority of nursing staff interviewed believed, and the review team agrees, that the senior nursing leadership critical to representing the professional views of nurses at the executive level was missing. It is the team’s view that, in some instances, relationships appear to have broken down irreparably,” the report said.

It added: “There was clear evidence that mutual respect and understanding was absent in Roscommon Mental Health Services. It appears that the personal relationships between some, but not all, of the staff involved in the review process and some, but not all, of the management, was fraught with difficulty and had broken down. Some senior medical and nursing staff maintained that these relationship difficulties impacted on their ability to bring about the changes they felt were necessary.”

Deputy Rabbitte said staff and service users have lost faith in management’s ability to run the services. She said the recommendations of the report need to be implemented in the interest of users of mental health services in Roscommon and East Galway.