Letters to the Editor: Limerick life crisis team could draw inspiration from its name
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Security Correspondent Cormac O’Keefe (Irish Examiner, September 24) flags the imminent operational launch of a life distress crisis team in Limerick. It aims to support and ease the engagement of statutory systems in dealing with acute life-distress/disturbance scenarios.
Apparently, the idea originated via policing quandaries in the course of dealing with disturbed citizens deemed at risk of harm to self or other. Called a community access support team, it is to operate from a Garda station in Limerick with a mix of health professionals plus gardaí.
One would have to wish it success since it will have to deal with some very tricky situations. But one also has to fervently hope that it will operate a creative psychodynamic mode of supportive response, rather than merely biomedical or incarcerative.
Current mental psychiatric systems and philosophies of care in Ireland are predominantly prone to a domineering rush to medicate with frequent recourse to commitment into closed-ward detention. Once snared in such a web of enforced biomedical templates, one can be forever beholden to that system with inevitable medication dependence and often poor eventual outcome in terms of restoration of authentic, settled self.
People suffering from severe life distress are regularly signed into this scenario against their wishes, and then asked to sign a form of agreement that they will comply with ongoing treatment plans devised by a hospital team, dominated by a consultant psychiatrist with little non-medical alternative input or option to decline. Psychotherapies somehow seem off-beam and rarely offered or considered.
The first instinct of care appears to be solely biomedical, with a sprinkling of ancillary supports with mere distractive rather than restorative value. This claustrophobic model of healthcare response must be changed and designed to restore a person’s dignity of self in the round, rather than simply solving an immediate risk scenario, with likely ongoing ensnarement. Engaging the person in meaningful, respectful way, rather than just dousing an urgent immediacy.
One hopes that the three words in the title of the Limerick crisis team truly radiate and resonate throughout their challenging work:
- Community — that the person is actually treated in the community;
- Access — that they have access to individualised psychodynamic therapeutic engagement;
- Support — that they garner a range of specific supports to suit their personal idiosyncratic needs.
Tough assignment for sure, but it’s the real McCoy requirement for successful outcomes, where an individual can thrive and flourish with independent personal decorum going forward.
Having worked for many years within various mental health units/teams in London and Dublin, and constantly researching the issue, I know there is no other way.
Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire/Lament for Art O’ Leary, written by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill about the murder of her husband in May 1773, is a profoundly moving expression of grief and, according to poet and academic Peter Levi, “the greatest poem written in these island in the whole of the 18th century”.
Having visited O’Leary’s grave recently in the ruins of the 15th century Kilcrea Friary, near Ovens, Co Cork, I’ve no doubt that Eibhlín Dubh’s heart would be broken again if she were to see the lamentable condition her husband’s grave is in: a cheap-looking, faded information notice about the murder and the poem, the famous inscription on the elevated horizontal tombstone (“Lo! Arthur Leary, generous, handsome, brave/Slain in his bloom lies in this humble grave”) eroded by the elements to near illegibility; the information notice about the friary itself is also in poor condition.
Surely, the Office of Public Works and the National Monuments Service can do better than this: new, high quality notices and a transparent protective cover for the tombstone — and at a reasonable cost please.
While Eoin Ó Broin and Darragh O’Brien lambast each other over social and affordable housing, I recently had a conversation with a builder/entrepreneur, who is building two and three-bedroom modular homes in Gaoth Dobhair, Co Donegal, for a fraction of what it would cost for brickbuilt homes.
Though these homes are part of long-term holiday leases, he has tried to persuade Donegal County Council that, in order for people to get on to the housing ladder, or for more council homes be made available, it would cost a mere €73,000 for a two-bedroom and €110,000 for a three-bedroomed modular home to be built.
While the costs of building materials are ever increasing, with the lack of apprentices and specialists in the building industry, and also the environmental impact, moving away from brick build to a more environmentally-friendly form of construction, this should be looked at as an alternative to what is happening in the industry.
These cost-effective modular homes would negate the necessity fir the costlier brick built homes.
I am utterly convinced that this is the way to go, and that it gives our young working class, even our homeless, an alternative form of housing that would be a fraction of the cost and could be constructed in a fraction of the time and cost it would take to construct a brickbuilt home.
We need to start thinking outside the box and we need planning sections in councils, and the housing minister, to give the OK to this form of building, not just for holiday homes but for housing in general. If planning regulations need to be amended to allow this to happen then this should be expedited.
While the idea of banning social media for children under 16 is suggested with the best of intentions, could the alternative be worse? If students don’t have their apps, they may flock to the uncensored, unfiltered, and unmoderated internet.
They can go online and search for anything and everything with no age restrictions or censorship.
Some less reputable websites may lead students down a rabbit hole of radical ideas and inappropriate content.
Also, if a student has a disagreement on a web forum, the responses may be a lot more intense than anything previously experienced on their socials.
Banning social media may offer a certain amount of protection for children. However, if they turn to the internet for entertainment,
parents and teachers may find themselves repeating the same internet safety speeches they were given, in the 1990s, before apps were so popular.
While onshore wind farms now supply about a third of Ireland’s electricity, we still have some of the highest carbon emissions in the EU. However, we are aiming for more than adequate offshore wind energy to significantly reduce our carbon emissions by 2030 and, potentially, and belatedly, achieve emissions targets.
As we don’t have a single port capable of supporting an offshore wind farm at present, Ireland will not achieve its offshore wind energy targets any time soon.
It is also worth saying that, with the offshore contribution of wind, a small amount of nuclear energy should be sufficient to provide a sustainable, low emissions target.
It was heartening to watch the Australia Rules Grand Final last Saturday and see Conor McKenna (Tyrone) walk to the podium to collect his winner’s medal, becoming only the second Irish player (after Kerry’s Tadhg Kennelly) to win both an All-Ireland and an AFL Premiership.
The game was also engaging in that it underscored the current sad state of its distant cousin, Gaelic Football. The overall speed of the game, the swiftness of the passing, the high catching and the instinctive ‘mind-set’ to play the ball forward made for a very entertaining spectacle, even though it was a fairly one-sided final with Brisbane Lions beating Sydney Swans by double scores.
One sincerely hopes Jim Gavin and his football review committee get serious buy-in from all stakeholders in Gaelic football as he trials the committee’s proposed rule enhancements in five interprovincial ‘sandbox’ matches in mid-October.