The need for holistic ‘mental health’ promotion in Ireland.

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Saturday November 08, 2008 20:01

by Sean - Soul Freedom Ireland

We urgently need a holistic approach to mental health and well being in Ireland. Recent research findings of the Health Research Board revealed that of the almost 2,500 drug related deaths in the past eight years, prescription tranquillisers such as benzodiazepines were involved in more deaths than any other drug, legal or illegal.

We urgently need a holistic approach to mental health and well being in Ireland. Recent research findings of the Health Research Board revealed that of the almost 2,500 drug related deaths in the past eight years, prescription tranquillisers such as benzodiazepines were involved in more deaths than any other drug, legal or illegal. Tragically, these psychiatric drug related deaths will continue because there is as yet no serious commitment to develop and implement genuine forms of care and support for those suffering mental and emotional distress.

Soul Freedom Ireland raises a number of relevant questions about psychiatry and challenges its approach to severe mental and emotional distress. It looks at some of the experiences of psychiatric survivors in Ireland. It argues that psychiatry is doing a great deal more harm than good and that its drug ‘treatments’, especially if prescribed long term, do cause neurological and other serious illnesses. It argues that this should stop and that while it may be in the interests of psychiatrists and their economic survival to prevent real change the present status quo is most definitely not in the interests of their ‘patients’. Orthodox psychiatry has failed in its quest to ‘treat’ ‘mental illness’.

The health and well being of the Irish people and particular the most vulnerable in society must be placed before the economic self-interest of those advocating and prescribing such drugs. The mental heath system’s approach of trying to drug away people’s problems in life has clearly failed and must be replaced with humane, holistic and dignified methods and deal with the root causes of such suffering.