Emergency departments in Galway, and throughout the State, need to be properly resourced by the Government, so they can provide appropriate care for people presenting with self-harm.
This is the view of Sinn Féin Galway West TD, Mairéad Farrell, who was speaking following a response to a parliamentary questions submitted by Sinn Féin’s Mental Health spokesperson, Dep Mark Ward, which revealed that 5,432 people presented to 15 hospitals with incidents of self-harm in 2020.
While this was not a significant increase on figures from 2018 and 2019, it still represented an average of 15 presentations a day to hospitals.
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“There are insufficient resources that are leading to gaps in the service, and when there are gaps, vulnerable people tend to fall through them,” said Dep Farrell [pictured above]. “This can be critical when it comes to people presenting with self-harm.
“Self-harm is an indicator of serious mental and emotional distress, and repeated episodes may indicate suicidality, so to see a continuing high rate of presentations to hospitals is very worrying. The €24 million in new spending for mental health announced by the government does not go anywhere near far enough.”
