Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

I move amendment No. 19:
In page 17, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following:
“(iv) psychologist;
Amendments Nos. 19, 21 and 22 have slight variations but are all in the same vein. We know how medicalised the whole area of mental health has become and obviously we need medical input at various levels. However, it is not only medical input that is important. Amendment No. 19 seeks to explicitly include psychologists as well as psychiatrists in the list of professionals contained in the definition of "mental healthcare professional" in the Bill. I looked at the Bill as a whole and at where I could and could not add psychologist. However, because psychiatrist is mentioned so many times, I would have had to submit almost 200 amendments to include psychology alongside psychiatry at each turn. This amendment is a kind of compromise to make the inclusion easier and more manageable. As drafted, the list currently includes consultant psychiatrists, registered nurses, social workers, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. I acknowledge that there is flexibility within the Bill for the Minister to add designated professionals in future by regulation and it is important that this list includes a greater variety of perspectives, especially those that are psychosocial in nature, to ensure there is not an overconcentration of acute medical input. While there is flexibility there and registered nurses, social care workers and occupational therapists are included, they look at care in the round. Psychology looks at the specific area of mental health but it is not as medicalised in terms of the mental health aspect of someone's care.
Amendment No. 21 seeks to add in a person's wider psychosocial care team in the list of professionals included in the definition of "mental healthcare professional". This would provide scope for professionals who support an individual, either in acute or community care settings, to be considered as part of his or her mental health care team under the Bill. This amendment is extremely important to me in the context of the profession that I have worked in for over 20 years. Consistently, I have been involved in the care of an individual who has either ended up in a mental health care setting, or in and out of accident and emergency departments, homelessness or the addiction services that I have been involved in providing. I may have had the most access to that person, pre-hospitalisation. Prior to being elected to this House and when I was part of a community care team, I may have been the person who had to create a care plan with that individual when he or she was being cared for in the community. It is really about connecting the residential or hospital setting with the community care piece. The aim is to widen it out so that the people, services and professions that are part of that continuum of care are all included. In addiction services, much like mental health services, we have to acknowledge that there is a continuum of care and people will need different types of care at different times in their lives. People will not always be in a position where they need or want care. There may be times when they are on medication and then they do not need it. That may change and ebb and flow throughout a person's lifetime, and within that community care piece, there are different types of professions that will be involved in that person's life and in his or her care as a whole.
Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 seek to consider what that psychosocial care team looks like. Amendment No. 22 specifically provides for psychosocial care in the definition of a person's multidisciplinary team. As drafted, the Bill includes only those professions already included in the definition of "mental healthcare professional". I remember doing a session many years ago in Tallaght Cross. There is a Trinity College facility out there which I think is connected to training. The social prescribing team there was very heavily involved with older people or people who were isolated and who had an extreme experience of a mental health episode that could have been related to age or isolation. The social prescribing team was extremely impactful and important for people. It helped them to look at all of the other things that may have contributed to their mental health issues, including environmental factors, which may impact on a person's mental health at any given time. These amendments seek to widen out the teams to have a greater number of different perspectives, persons and professionals. It would also include those who will, most likely, have the most access to people on any given day when they are in the community, pre- or post-hospitalisation. That may be the person who has the fullest and most rounded picture of the individual's life and who is hugely trusted by the individual, as part of that wider team.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09