Debate contribution: Mental Health Provision in Northern Ireland

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 30 September 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

30 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Mental Health Provision in Northern Ireland

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4563535

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is important that the Assembly and the Executive get to grips with the mental ill health epidemic that all our communities are facing but that is, obviously and always, more acutely felt by working-class and deprived communities, as has been said. The rich can avoid the daily grind and go on relaxation retreats when they want to, but everyone else has to focus on paying skyrocketing rents, paying for unaffordable childcare and being paid historically low wages and, of course, on dealing with depression, anxiety and suicide. As we have heard, those rates, tragically, are three times higher in more deprived areas. I know that mental health workers, counsellors and other people in the sector are doing really important and, in many cases, literally life-saving work, but they are trying to push a boulder up a mountain. The system is completely broken and completely underfunded. The need is not reflected in the Budget allocations, and that situation needs to be addressed urgently. We also have to ask — I am glad that the Minister is here — whether the Protect Life 2 strategy is ambitious enough and, more to the point, whether it has worked. Given the tragic suicide figures, I suggest that it has not. I have submitted some questions for written answer to tease out some information about that. We need to publish the review, which should happen ASAP. We had a rapid review, which was agreed in December 2023, but, like most things in this place, it is moving at a snail's pace and now needs to be published ASAP. There are therefore massive questions about what the Department is doing around preventative mental health measures. We also have to ask whether decisions made by the Minister of Health and others in the Executive will increase anxiety and mental ill health, and possibly lead to worse. The previous Health Minister's decision to ban puberty blockers has already led to fear and anxiety shooting through the roof amongst our trans and non-binary community, which is a really marginalised and isolated community.

There are questions about that policy and whether it is doing anything good — it is not — for mental ill health. The decision by the Department for Communities and the Executive to cut the winter fuel payment for 250,000 pensioners is, I am sure, doing wonders for their mental health. A welfare system that dehumanises and literally punishes people in a Dickensian manner leads directly to more poverty and poor mental health. All those issues and more are connected. We need to call out what the Executive have not done and have not committed to around mental health but also those economic and political decisions made by them that have battered people and led to worse mental health. People are products of their environment, they are shaped by it, and that is never more true than when talking about mental health. Having a no-silo mentality is always mentioned in Stormont but that is never more true than when talking about mental health. Along with others, I recently met New Script for Mental Health, which is running a fantastic campaign. It is a family of campaigners and activists. I urge the Minister and his officials to meet the group, if they have not already done so. The main point taken from meeting them was that we are likely overprescribing antidepressants. No doubt, many people do need those prescriptions, but is society accepting the mass prescribing of antidepressants because it is cheaper than providing counselling, talking therapies and other labour-intensive but life-saving services? I would guess yes. I commend those families that have been speaking out and holding people together through mental ill health and suicide crises. I thank all the campaigning groups that have been mentioned, but also others that have not but do that important work. Also, I want to mention West Wellbeing centre in my constituency, which does lifesaving and important work, including with members of my family, but which, despite a motion being passed in Belfast City Council a few months ago, is still waiting on the tens of thousands of pounds coming through from the council to provide extra counselling sessions and services. I call on those parties on Belfast City Council currently blocking that motion and money to get their act together and let the money be released.

727 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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