Call to extend mother and baby homes inquiry to mental homes

Campaigners say an inquiry into mother and baby homes should be widened to include mental hospitals following further controversy over high death rates, unmarked graves and allegations of patient mistreatment.

 

Research shows that 33,000 patients died in overcrowded and disease-ridden psychiatric hospitals between the late 1920s and early 1960s, with death rates significantly higher than in the general community.

 

The State also had the highest rate of admissions to mental hospitals recorded anywhere in the world at the time, peaking in the late 1950s, when more than 20,000 people were resident in these institutions.by inquiry ‘should cover other institutions’

 

Mind Freedom Ireland, which campaigns for the rights of psychiatric patients, said the proposed inquiry should examine the role of mental hospitals in wrongfully detaining healthy individuals.

Source: www.irishtimes.com

“The inquiry should include the sub-human treatment of people in psychiatric institutions . . . including involuntary detention, seclusion, four-point restraint and forced treatment including the administration of electroshock against a person’s will,” said the group.

Northamptonshire, United Kingdom MUST be on the list for an inquiry.  I did ask Michael Ellis MP for an inquiry, 

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