Mental Health Reform are calling on the Government to end the decades of neglect of mental healthcare by investing in mental health in Budget 2019.
Mental health services in Ireland are now so far behind that despite investment in new services of €210M between 2012 and 2018, the system still cannot cope with the amount of people coming forward to access supports. The Government can show they are serious about tackling the crisis in mental health services by investing at least €105M in Budget 2019.
The Government has already committed to investing €55M for new services in mental health in Budget 2019, but this will not be enough.The Government needs to address serious gaps in existing service needs and invest in new services in order to make ground on the decades of neglect experienced by Ireland’s mental health services. You can read Mental Health Reform’s full pre-budget statement here.
Recommended spend of €105M investment
- Building staff levels to ensure all service users have timely access to mental healthcare
- Develop 7 days a week, community based, crisis mental health services for children and adolescents
- Increase capacity in the Counselling in Primary Care service
- Invest in primary care psychology services
- Increase the capacity of national advocacy services for children, adolescents and adults in hospital and in the community
#IAmAReason
If you need to talk to someone right now – call Samaritans on 116 123.
If you want to find out about mental health services in your area – visit yourmentalhealth.ie.
