Peadar Clohessy
Ceist:62 Mr. Clohessy asked the Minister for Health his views on the call by a leading Dublin GP (details supplied) that doctors should be given powers to forcibly commit alcoholics to hospitals.
Written Answers. - Hospital Admission of Alcoholics.
The Report of the Study Group on the Development of the Psychiatric Services, Planning for the Future published in 1984 recommended that alcohol related problems should be dealt with at a community level by the primary health care and social services.
Current policy relating to treatment of alcoholism is in line with the recommendations of Planning for the Future. A comprehensive range of services in the community for people with alcohol related problems is being developed throughout the country. There is no evidence to suggest that intensive, high cost in-patient treatment is more effective than community based intervention in assisting people with alcohol addiction.
The question of involuntary admissions to psychiatric hospitals, including those persons who suffer from alcoholism, is currently being reviewed by my Department in the context of the Green Paper on Mental Health which was published in June, 1992. The Green Paper draws attention to the exclusion, under the European Convention on Human Rights, of social nonconformity, including addiction to alcohol, as grounds for involuntary detention of a person in a psychiatric hospital.
It is my intention to bring forward to Government proposals for new mental health legislation this year which will deal, inter alia, with the grounds for involuntary commital to psychiatric hospitals.