Ireland has been accused of failing to recognise good mental healthcare as a basic human right in a damning Amnesty International report on the State's psychiatric services, writes Dr Muiris Houston, Medical Correspondent
The report states that mental healthcare is "seriously out of step" with international best practice
Titled Mental Illness: The Neglected Quarter, the report also claims that treatment of people with mental illness is part of a wider discrimination against people with disabilities.
It calls on the State to deliver new disability legislation in line with UN recommendations.
The Amnesty report, which will be published today, says that under-funding is the main reason the Republic has failed to achieve a reasonable standard of mental healthcare. In-patient care and community services for people with mental illness is inadequate and severely under-resourced in staff, money and available therapies, it adds.
It singles out services for children and adolescents, the homeless, prisoners and other vulnerable groups as being particularly deficient.
"The Irish Government is obliged not alone to ensure that suitable services are provided, but that people are assisted and enabled to access these services," the report stated.