25/06/2025
Let’s call a spade a spade: there is virtually zero public mental health care in Ireland. If you can’t afford to pay tens of thousands for private treatment, you're left to fight your demons alone. You're left to suffer. You're left to die.
Right now, mental illness for the working class in this country is a terminal illness.
We’ve seen it first-hand here in Dundalk, six lives lost in just the last two weeks. Six people who might still be here if real support existed. Six families shattered!
This is not a coincidence. This is an epidemic.
Our government must call an emergency meeting and end the brutal inequality in mental health care. Every day they sit on their hands, their silence is complicit. Their inaction has blood on it.
Mental illness is a terminal illness.
Su***de in Ireland is an epidemic.
But the people are the cure.
Stand up. Speak out.
Make them hear us.
Enough is enough.
👥🏥 A new report has revealed how Ireland’s inflexible healthcare system is excluding the homeless from mental health services, leading to a cycle where individuals with substance use disorders are denied psychiatric care.
The ‘Review of Crisis Mental Health Support within Inclusion Health’ led by Assistant Professor John Gilmore, UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems, has identified fragmentation of services, where housing, healthcare, mental health, and addiction services operate in silos rather than providing integrated care, as a key issue.
Interviewees noted that the current system places unrealistic expectations on service users to navigate multiple layers of bureaucracy, which can be overwhelming and unachievable for people experiencing homelessness.
Other significant barriers identified include restrictive eligibility criteria, poor service coordination, long waiting lists, and the transient nature of homelessness itself.
“Clients go all around the city to get a wound dressed here, meds there, and methadone over there. It would be impossible for somebody who’s housed, working, and fully educated to keep up with that level of access to care,” said one service provider.
“Homeless services are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We don’t provide mental health care; we’re not funded to provide mental health care. Yet, the vast majority of our clients have mental health needs and some kind of mental health diagnosis,” reported another.
