A remote farmhouse centre faces closure over lack of recognition and funding. Elaine Edwards reports
A centre that provides what it claims is a unique treatment programme for people with musculoskeletal pain, violence issues, addiction, mental health problems and autism has said it may have to close if it fails to secure funding.
The Irish Institute of Naturopathic Medicine, based in a farmhouse in the remote Glen of Imaal in Co Wicklow, has, since 2001, been offering what it describes as an "integrated, drug-free medical treatment regime" for individuals and families.
Run by Dublin-born Maureen Mulligan, who claims 14 years of success in using her unusual treatment with prisoners in Britain and Ireland, the centre claims recent success in treating, among others, a young woman with a 10-year history of severe self-harm and alcoholism and a man who had homicidal inclinations towards his wife and children.
Mulligan, who says she is "not a conventional medical practitioner", says she received some 7,000 inquiries following her appearance on The Late Late Show last year.
She describes herself as a "neurological naturopath" and an "engineer" - the therapy is derived from cranial osteopathy, she says. As with many other 'alternative' treatments, it has no official or statutory recognition, but while Mulligan doesn't claim to work miracles, she believes she has a unique "medicine" to benefit people with a wide variety of problems.
Her success "depends on the patient's willingness to interact, relative to the problem they are working with. They have to follow through on the guidance. I'm getting them to face their negativity and to transcend it."
Mulligan says the therapy, cranial structural alignment (which draws a blank with internet search engines and with a number of people working in the health field here), is a natural procedure which evolved from her work as director of complementary medical services over a period of 14 years in British jails with prisoners presenting with "patterns of control, violence, addiction and suicidal tendencies".
The programme of cranial structural alignment appears to involve a combination of hands-on work on the cranium and the musculoskeletal system, yoga, t'ai chi, elements of movement drawn from martial arts and, it seems, some element of psychotherapy.
Its literature talks of "working towards readjusting the body to a state of health" and releasing toxic material from the body, allowing pain and trauma that have been "denied or suppressed" to resurface.
Cynics will dismiss as psychobabble the description that the programme involves "behavioural intervention grounded in social integration and inclusion in practice and structured therapeutic communities", which essentially suggests a form of group therapy.
Mulligan's centre is a farmhouse with cats in the yard, a warm, welcoming kitchen, and vegetable soup on the stove.
She set up a group session for some of her clients to speak to The Irish Times which featured eight clients who, in some cases, drove from remote parts of the country to tell how they have benefited from the treatment.
Her clients sit on chairs and couches lining the walls of a small room with a fire lit in the hearth. A few small, printed religious pictures are pasted on the walls, including some of Padre Pio. A wooden Sacred Heart statue stands on the floor near the fireplace and there's a buddha on a table opposite.
The group includes Donal, a young farmer with back problems who confesses to initially having believed Mulligan to be "sort of for the birds"; a secretary immobilised from pain after a traffic accident; a man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and homicidal thoughts; and a young woman with a traumatic history of self-harm and alcohol addiction.
All testify that they have been helped greatly by her programme, but all find it difficult to explain Mulligan's treatment.
Noreen Lucey from Cork says: "It's very hard to put it into words. The pain relief has basically given me my life back."
Another woman, a nurse, says it is difficult to describe the therapy, difficult to find "a voice for what we are doing". She herself has suffered severe back pain and has been attending the centre since January.
Seamus and Pauline McNamee from Tyrone have been attending the Mulligan for almost a year with their son Enda (5), who has autism. They believe the eight days of treatment Enda has had in all have helped his behaviour, his language skills and his overall complexion.
"The work she has done with him has left it so that you can work with him and teach him. I had believed you could not teach him anything, because he was hard to manage and difficult." After Mulligan's treatment, Enda "really settled down".
"Enda's speech was slow, but it's coming on. Every time he's in Wicklow he seems to come out with a new word. He has an increasing amount of language. I think Enda's treatment has actually helped us as parents. I think it's calmed him way down and it's calmed me way down."
Mulligan wants funding of €5 million to set up a "centre of excellence" for treatment and to train students at the Wicklow premises.
She claims she has been approached by students from all over the world and that she has been offered funding in India and in Britain to carry out her work. She will leave Ireland if she doesn't get funding here, she says.
Recently, TDs John McGuinness and Billy Timmins have asked the Minister for Health in the Dáil to respond to applications for funding from a number of individuals whom they claim have benefited from the regime at the centre.
Mulligan is clearly frustrated at the lack of official recognition and funding for her therapy. She has in the past been turned down for £250,000 funding a year for a programme she had been running at Mountjoy women's prison.
Then Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue said in the Dáil in April 2001 he was not aware of any objective, scientific-based evidence to support the claim that the therapy had proven effective and that he did not believe Mulligan's proposal would be "an appropriate and beneficial use of public funds".
While lack of research and continued resistance to therapies that are seen as a little 'out there' by the mainstream health profession doesn't invalidate the positive experiences of her clients, it will be a battle for her to achieve the support she wants.
www.irishnaturalmedicine.com