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Lobby groups step up pressure in hospital move

Thursday, 07 August 2008

A mental health lobby group has stepped up pressure on the Government to reverse its decision to relocate the Central Mental Hospital from its current location in Dundrum to a site beside the new Thornton Hall ‘super prison’.
The Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children was urged by the Irish Mental Health Coalition (IMHC) to persuade the Government to scrap the move following a visit by the committee to the site in North County Dublin last week.
In a statement given to committee members, the IMHC said the location of a new mental hospital beside the Thornton Hall prison would not be suitable for children visiting their parents.
“Consider the experience of a child visiting a parent in the Central Mental Hospital at Thornton Hall,” the statement urged. “That child will be oblivious to the distinct address or the management structures separating hospital and prison.
“The child will see, hear and absorb the environment – the distance from facilities, the discussions of others on the bus journey, the social isolation, the signposts for the prison, the adjacent prison complex, the presence of gardaí and prison officers in the vicinity.”
It adds: “How is a family to explain to a child, already struggling to make sense of a parent’s illness or prior actions as a result of illness, that mum or dad did not do anything wrong, is in hospital and not being punished – that the project is not co-located but is just adjacent to a prison.”
The IMHC also claimed the Government had not considered any alternatives to the Thornton Hall site. They pointed out that earlier this year a top economist had presented an economically viable basis for the redevelopment of the Central Mental Hospital on its present site in Dundrum.
John Saunders, chairman of the IMHC, said that locating the hospital next to the prison would further stigmatise patients and contribute to the criminalisation of mental illness.
“The Central Mental Hospital is a caring health service working to support people with serious mental illness in their treatment and recovery,” he said.
“Placing it in a rural location beside the largest prison in the State is entirely incompatible with the rehabilitative principles of mental health service.”
He also highlighted the practicalities and difficulties of delivering effective treatment in a rural location.
“The Central Mental Hospital needs to be able to retain, restore and establish patients’ social connections and functions,” he added. “Access to local community facilities is a vital part of reintegrating and rehabilitating patients. It would be extremely difficult to do this in the rural location at Thornton Hall.”
Following the Oireachtas committee’s visit to the Thornton Hall site, Fine Gael TD Dan Neville claimed that all the groups involved with caring for the mentally ill had rejected the move.
“Proposals to place the CMH next to the new prison complex have been roundly rejected by the families and carers of hospital residents, voluntary organisations, the Mental Health Commission, the clinical director of the CMH and the Human Rights Commission,” he said.
He pointed out that in a letter to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the clinical director of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dr Harry Kennedy, had stated: “The proposal is about as bad an idea as it is possible to imagine”.
“There is an urgent need for a new hospital to replace the Central Mental Hospital but this should be located beside a general hospital,” he added.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Children said while the new mental hospital will be adjacent to the prison that is being built to replace Mountjoy, it was important to stress that the project was a separate one.
“Physically, it will have a separate entrance and separate road access,” the spokesman said. “Organisationally, it will continue to be operated by the HSE and remain distinct and separate from the prison.”

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