Psychiatrists ‘must make their voices heard’

In his address at this year’s College of Psychiatrists of Ireland (CPsychI) Spring Conference, CPsychI President Dr Lorcan Martin expressed frustration about the failure of policymakers to address the ongoing challenges in psychiatry.

“Our profession still looks over a landscape where challenges and obstacles meet up for an unfortunate [encounter]  with bureaucracy,” said Dr Martin. “No one takes up medicine for an easy life, but it can be disheartening when we are faced with the ongoing issues of recruitment and retention, burnout, and presenteeism.”

He criticised the “ever-burgeoning management system with titles we can’t remember”, against a backdrop of inadequate staffing.

He also described the Mental Health Bill 2024 as a “convoluted and unhelpful document” that will make it “almost impossible for psychiatrists to properly do their jobs”.

While proponents of the Bill say it is firmly embedded in human rights, Dr Martin was scathing in his assessment.

“‘Human rights’ – the clarion call of those who wish to justify their opinion and signal their virtue,” he told the attendees.

“But do they ever think about the consequences of their view of ‘human rights?’”

Dr Martin referred to the European Convention of Human Rights, specifically the right “not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or torture”.

“Depriving a psychotic patient of treatment, or delaying that treatment so that they continue to be tormented by delusions or terrified by persecutory hallucinations, is almost certainly torture,” said Dr Martin.

He added that he wondered if the people who prepared the legislation “ever have known, or have forgotten what it is like, to see a patient profoundly distressed by symptoms that should be alleviated at the earliest opportunity and not delayed by legislation.”

Dr Martin also encouraged attendees to remember the core of their profession.

“We are physicians who tend to the ill with skill and compassion,” he told the conference.

“We are scientists who base our practice on gold-standard outcomes and we are leaders in our field who can inspire and advocate. What we do require is years of training and professional and personal resilience. We should not and cannot allow that to be buried under rainforests’ worth of paper as we still don’t have proper IT support, or thwarted by management, into which all responsibility and decision-making ability dissolves.

“We are told that restructuring the health service will bring about greater efficiency and a better patient experience,” he continued. “Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, but we must make sure that our voice is heard, especially when it comes to resources and opportunities for training that are on a par with those of our acute hospital colleagues.”