The Department of Health and health boards have been criticised for failing to develop alcohol treatment services in the State.wasted
Dr Shane Butler, senior lecturer in social work, and academic director of the addiction research centre at Dublin's Trinity College, claimed yesterday that alcohol treatment services were "haphazard, confused and not integrated" and scarce resources were not being used effectively.
He said the Planning for the Future report published in 1984 recommended community- and evidence-based treatment for those with alcohol problems within the mental health services.
Furthermore, the report said outpatient counselling would become the norm, largely replacing hospital admissions.
Yet in 2003 some 17 per cent of all admissions to psychiatric units/hospitals were still alcohol related.
The recommendations, he said, were "largely ignored" by national and regional healthcare managers.
"Although Planning for the Future may be considered a success in its general attempt to reform an old-fashioned, institutional mental health service, its alcohol-specific recommendations cannot be deemed to have been successful.
"Alcohol services are still fragmented and confusing," he said. Another factor, he added, which contributed to the report not being implemented was public pressure for inpatient treatment.
He said there was, for example, opposition last year to the Western Health Board's plan to close inpatient facilities at St Brigid's psychiatric hospital in Ballinasloe.
Addiction counselling had in some ways emerged as a separate profession "and it hasn't worked in a fully integrated way with the overall mental health system".
They were fighting their own corner, he said.
Furthermore, he claimed alcohol counsellors were "sceptical about scientific research", especially if the results cast doubt on favoured treatment models.
Dr Butler was speaking at a conference on alcohol treatment at TCD.
Meanwhile, Mr Rolande Anderson, project director of an Irish College of General Practitioners' project, aimed at helping patients with alcohol problems, told delegates that the current binge drinking culture, which has seen consumption here increase by 41 per cent in a decade, would result in a flood of referrals to alcohol counselling and the psychiatric services.
"While the description of the problem has been well articulated, there has been little talk and it would seem a lack of planning to respond to the development of an integrated treatment system for the victims of our national problem.
"A well co-ordinated system which ensures that everyone who needs to, can access help, is urgently required," he said.
He suggested GPs, if properly resourced, were well placed to routinely screen patients for alcohol problems.
Studies had shown their intervention could result in a reduction of between 10 and 20 per cent in alcohol consumption.