Funding for Mental Health ??????

Acoustic

First off i wanna say im disgusted at the way this governmant is run as everybody is

more people die every year from mental health related issues than driving

example : over 500 died last year from suicide from mental health issues , to the 300 odd from car crashes , yet the governmant allocated €40 million towards road safety and only €1 million towards mental health

this is a fcuking joke , and the cost of therapy if people go to get help is astronomical , i suffered with anxiety for a few years and still do , i was paying €100 for 1 session every week , which is a ridiculous amount of money

people with diabetes dont have to pay for their illness why should people with mental health issues pay ???

ugliest

I know, it's ridiculous!

The wait list for talk therapy is ridiculously long (so long they generally encourage you to go private), which, as you said, is horrendously expensive. I actually had a doctor tell me they prefer to just try meds because therapy etc. is so expensive. This was when I was just gone 18 and meekly inquired about the possibility since I'd already been on meds a while. Several years later and I'm wondering if it would actually have been cheaper to sort me out then, instead of pumping me full of a variety of drugs for an indeterminate number of years.

That said, things have gotten a fair bit better since the HSE stepped in. The Health Board were just appalling.

This country still has a huge stigma with mental health. Mostly those who suffer don't want the world to know they do, and so like to keep as quiet about it as possible. Because of this there are not enough people fighting for the rights of people with mental health issues.

The government is really sending out the message that those who suffer should do so quietly and almost be ashamed.

Schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and a whole host of other mental illness all have physical ramifications in the brain. Scans can actually show something is wrong. For this reason (and many more), it seems terribly unfair that there is so much stigma attached to mental illness.

This country has an ethos of pretending everything's okay and avoiding difficult topics and putting on an (equivocally) happy face. We don't want to talk about it, we don't want to hear about it, but it's there. And until we accept it and decide to deal with it, it's not going to get any better.

MUSEIST

@acoustic

Well I am type 1 Diabetic for 10 years and have to pay 100 euro every time I go to that evil doctor of mine but I agree with what your saying, i was referred to a phycologist recently and I have no idea how I'm going to afford it, I may not be able to go, Its a disgrace.

LegacyUser

on that topic - what does one do if someone has to be hospitalised with a mental illness, but the VHI coverage runs out (they only cover 180 days of treatment per year)?

Has anyone been in this situation? The person in question is currently in St. Pat's, but coverage will run out shortly, and then we were told it's roughly 4 k a week to keep the person in for treatment or send the person home. Which I don't think anyone bar the super-rich could afford, and/or the family could not cope with.

Are there any other options out there?

sam34

guest 09 wrote: »

on that topic - what does one do if someone has to be hospitalised with a mental illness, but the VHI coverage runs out (they only cover 180 days of treatment per year)?

Has anyone been in this situation? The person in question is currently in St. Pat's, but coverage will run out shortly, and then we were told it's roughly 4 k a week to keep the person in for treatment or send the person home. Which I don't think anyone bar the super-rich could afford, and/or the family could not cope with.

Are there any other options out there?

i've come across this with patients of mine before.

the "caring" hospital will stop caring pretty quickly once teh money runs out. the patient has teh option of paying themselves (or with family help) or else they can attend their local public psychiatric ward.

despite public perception, teh public services arent actually that bad. and the benefit of tehm is that there will be community follow up after discharge if teh patient needs it, the private hospitals dont provide this. that issue, and teh cost one, is why i dont have a very high opinion of private psych hospitals.

LegacyUser

well, there's a long history of poor 'care' in the public hospital, and that is another big problem. there is no way the person in question would go into the psych unit in the local public hospital, since the experiences were really, really bad (illness has been going on for 40 years, so there's a lot of built up resentment there - while I believe that the public units may have gotten better, there were really, really bad back then (we're talking tying patients down, using them as guinea pigs for all sorts of wacky medication, beating patients up, etc etc. (perception of mental illness is pretty poor still, but I ccan only imagine what it would have been like 40 years ago...).

Can you 'choose' a public hospital if you were in this situation? As in, instead of say a Cork hospital, go to Donegal instead (just examples, not actual location)?

Cause obviously, neither the person nor the family can come up with sums like that to continue private care, as harsh as it sounds.