Mentally Ill People Denied a Place to Live

cork | health / disability issues | news report

Friday May 20, 2005 15:10

by Kieran O'Sullivan - Many

kieran.osullivan at ireland dot com

Disabled rights trampled on by Prejudice

A residents group in Charlavill who thik that they have the right to deny Irish citizens the right to live in an area based on their disability is trampling the rights of mentally ill people.

Mentally Ill People Denied a Place to Live

I last weeks village magazine there was an article about a clash between the rights of local residents and the rights of mentally ill people to live in a community. I’m not going into too much detail as this was more than adequately covered in last weeks village.

Basically the residents say “We were not consulted about having these people living here … we don’t object to them living here but we want to be consulted”. This kind of attitude is quite frankly disgusting. If you don’t mind someone living in your area then why do you need to be consulted?

The answer is that they do mind and they seem to think that they have the right to say where a person with a disability can live. If a the residents had objected to a black family moving in well then they would be quite rightly called racist however nobody seems to be willing to call these people prejudiced against people with a mental illness.

Prejudice against mental illness is rampant in Irish society. Vincent Brown has been running a campaign on the treatment of the mentally ill in Irish society for a number of years now. However attitudes seem to have changed little. I remember a case in Dun Laoghaire about 3 years ago where residents objected to a house for mentally ill people in their area and the health board rolled over and didn’t move the people in.

I will end my commentary with this question for those people down in Charlavill if any resident of your housing estate becomes mentally Ill will they have to move out?

PS The Vincant Browne show on Monday night will be covering this issue. I would urge averyone to tune in and listen to it. 10pm Radio 1.