Resources not an issue in mental health service, Lynch insists

The Carlow-Kilkenny-South Tipperary mental health service is one of the best resourced services in the country, Minister of State Kathleen Lynch has said, after nine consultant psychiatrists withdrew confidence in the clinical management of the service.

The group of consultants said they believed the service was unsafe after nine deaths by suicide of service users between August 2011 and January 2013 and four “serious incidents”. These included three suicides of inpatients, four suicides at home, and a further suicide in a “crisis house”. A further four reported suicides have occurred since.

Serious concerns

The consultants wrote to the Minister in June 2013 to express their serious concerns about local services following the nine fatalities. RTÉ's This Week programme received the letter through a Freedom of Information request.

In the letter, the doctors said they had repeatedly raised their concerns with the HSE about the management of the service, and they called on Ms Lynch to ensure proper investigation of incidents, the proper implementation of reforms and to ensure the findings of such investigations would be communicated properly.

They said the service was failing its patients and it was not working in its current format. The group of nine also said they were not informed of the outcome of investigations of serious incidents.

Lack of action

In an interview on the programme yesterday Ms Lynch said there was “no resource issue there” and the service had 658 employees.

A document prepared for the Minister said the deaths were in line with CSO figures for the previous decade for the area, but retired consultant Alan Moore told RTÉ the figures did not reflect the suicides in hospitals which he described as "extraordinary" and he said he was incredibly alarmed by the lack of action.

Ms Lynch said she had not ignored the psychiatrists’ concerns but had passed the information on to the HSE. A report on the area’s services was commissioned in December, six months after the consultants wrote to the Minister.

The report is due shortly and the Minister said she would act on its recommendations.