Meeting mental health targets ‘almost impossible’

By William Smith

Staff are struggling to make budget cuts while providing a sustainable service, a former senior health trust manager has told the BBC.

In the past year four of the five trusts’ senior managers in the area have left.

Meeting targets is almost impossible said Professor Nicola Rooney, a former manager of psychology services in the Belfast Health trust. She added that senior clinicians found it ‘extremely difficult’.

‘Meeting waiting list targets was almost impossible. In the past year four of the five service managers have taken early retirement,’ she said.

‘These posts, quite often are not being filled at the same level and this is how savings are being made. We are concerned about the quality of service that is being provided.’

BBC Northern Ireland health correspondent, Marie-Louise Connolly, reported that last year, there were almost 9,000 admissions to mental health hospitals, while that figure has fallen slightly, those seeking help for depression and attempted suicide has increased dramatically.

A 42 year-old mother from County Down spoke to the BBC about her mental health difficulties.

She tells how she has taken three overdoses in the past 18 months.

Despite being admitted to her local accident and emergency unit and advised by a consultant that she required urgent help, she waited for 12 month to get any.

She says that it was difficult to just get out of bed on a day to day basis. Initially she stayed in bed for weeks. She talks of depression as being ‘such a debilitating illness’.

In the interim period she was treated with anti-depressants which made little difference to her condition although she says that she was able to get out of bed but her quality of life was very low.

Once she started treatment with a psychologist the difference was marked. ‘There is someone there to listen to you and to explain things and to tell you that you will get better’ she said. ‘It’s a relationship that is extremely important to me. It’s made a difference to my family, it’s made a difference to the way I can deal with everyday life.’

She is back at work now although she still has good and bad days and explains that she can learn how to deal with that with the help of her psychologist.

Because of cuts to the local health trust budget temporary contracts are not being renewed and now her treatment must come to an end. She will go back on a waiting list and the special relationship that she has built with her psychologist will be broken.

‘I’m dreading it, since I was told it’s almost been like a grieving process,’ she said.

It will be September before she can be seen she has been told.

Dr. Stephen Bergin, a consultant in public medicine with the Public Health Agency said that be did not understand why she had to wait such a long time.

Dr Bergin said that he would look into her case and added that mental health budgets would be protected wherever possible.

The chair of the British Psychological Society in Northern Ireland said savage cuts to psychology budgets within trusts is at odds with policy.

Professor Chris McCusker said cutting budgets only threatens to undermine the psychological strategy announced by the Department of Health last year.

"The evidence is that there is a 15% cut in training commissions for new clinical psychologists," he said.