‘Acutely suicidal’ person could not access mental health services in county, cllr says

Someone believed to be “acutely suicidal” could not get help due to a lack of access to mental health services, a Roscommon County Councillor has claimed.

At a HSE West Regional Health Forum Cllr Emer Kelly told the forum that she had been contacted by someone she believed to be “acutely suicidal”, who could not access help.

She raised concerns about access to acute mental health services, stressing that it was not a reflection of the current service providers.

“There are cases where service users are being turned away, be it for a number of reasons, that there’s no capacity or they are deemed not to be acute enough. It is really not good enough that people are being turned away when they actually try to access help,” she said.

“I had a case a number of months ago where someone ended up ringing me because they were turned away from their emergency department. They couldn’t get through to their GP to get a letter. They were, from talking to them, acutely suicidal. And they had to ring me as a public representative, who is in no way is qualified, to help them access health services.” 

She said that a crisis team, like the one for Galway City, needed to be expanded outwards into rural areas. Since Covid, there has been a “large trend” of mental health issues, such as isolation, in rural areas.

“We need to make sure that people can access these services when they try to access them,” Cllr Kelly said.

She added that community services did not have the capacity to see people “in the time they need to be seen”.

During the meeting, the councillor also sought information on the planned upgrading works to the department of psychiatry at Roscommon University Hospital.

In response, the HSE said that work was underway to “develop a detailed plan for a new 50-bedded unit in Roscommon”.

“Work is currently underway to complete necessary documentation, and we anticipate that our finalised business case/project brief will be ready for submission to national estates for approval by the end of quarter two in 2025,” the HSE said.

Cllr Kelly welcomed plans for the new 50-bed unit and that a multi-disciplinary team had been set up to achieve it. She asked how long the business case would take to be approved.

Integrated Health Area Manager for Galway-Roscommon, Ms Ann Cosgrove said that the original brief was for a smaller unit at the hospital, but this had been expanded. She added that the HSE was cognisant of the demands on the services, “which we are experiencing on an ongoing basis”, leading to the proposed 50-bed unit. She said that she could not give the councillor a time frame for the unit’s development as the business case had not been submitted yet. However, she added that the standard timeframe from the initial approval to design to construction could be two to three years “easily”.

Cllr Kelly highlighted the need for the unit to be built quickly.

“I have heard that the (recently opened) 50-bedded unit at Portiuncula was based on plans from 15 years ago. I don’t want this to be a project that doesn’t happen for 15 to 20 years,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ms Cosgrove said that the HSE was continuously seeking to enhance services across the region, and acknowledged that more acute mental health beds, and supports in the community were needed.