REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE ALL IRELAND MENTAL HEALTH AND DEAFNESS SERVICE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE ALL IRELAND MENTAL HEALTH AND DEAFNESS SERVICE, BALLYMASCANLON HOTEL, DUNDALK
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid seo. Tá me buíoch dibh as an cuireadh agus an fáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
I want to thank you all for the very warm welcome you have given me today. My very special thanks to Sandra O’Brien for her kind invitation to launch this All Ireland Mental Health and Deafness Service. I would also like to thank the National Association for Deaf People and the Northern Ireland Health Trust for organising this event.
The service we are launching today is the result of much hard work and effort and determination by a group of very dedicated people, both in Northern Ireland and here in the South, committed to the provision of a service of excellence for those doubly disabled by deafness and mental illness. It is extremely heartening to see both organizations, North and South, working so well together to help those who are so greatly in need of that help.
A working partnership is not always an easy thing to create so I am sure that it was a cause of some joy and celebration and maybe even a sigh of relief when the last detail was agreed, the deed done. You have much to celebrate in this achievement – for you have put in place life-enriching, life-enhancing services for the men, women, boys and girls for whom deafness and hearing problems are compounded with mental illness to impact dramatically, and often devastatingly, on the enjoyment of everyday life.
The ability to engage in meaningful communication with those around us is at the very centre of our being and something we take very much for granted. Deafness or hearing impairment strikes at the heart of human contact. It makes it difficult and, all too often, can have the effect of cutting people off from the so-called ‘hearing’ world. Some of you may know that my brother John is profoundly deaf and growing up I remember him tugging at my elbow, or at my other siblings, as we were idly or glibly chatting among ourselves, to remind us to include him. Just as we, as children, needed to be reminded not to forget, it is important that society doesn’t forget or overlook any group, and more than that that, it makes every effort to mainstream inclusion of those very groups who are most in danger of being left out by virtue of disability. It is hardly surprising that among the deaf community we find evidence of considerable mental ill-health. Not only is there the loneliness and left-out-ness but for many, deafness has consigned them to lifelong literacy problems, educational problems, employment problems and under-achievement. Often they have had to face a hearing world which assumed that low achievement was an inevitable feature of deafness, rather than an inevitable feature of poor support infrastructure for the deaf from childhood right the way through adulthood.
For deaf people who suffer mental illhealth, the suffering is appalling and it adds hugely to their profound sense of exclusion from community, family and social interaction. Alongside the feelings of lack of hope and despair there are prejudices to be faced, and discriminatory attitudes which bring increased anguish and pain. What this island must want for its deaf citizens are lives lived in the light, lives that know joy and fulfilment, lives fully-lived not half-lived, lives enjoyed not endured. The number of people who live with both deafness and mental illness may be relatively small but that too impacts dreadfully on them for they are isolated geographically as well as socially and they have a very, very low social visibility – until now, and until this initiative, which I hope will open up a new level of awareness and sensitivity to this intense cruel situation.
Already the early work you have done is paying great dividends. In the three years since the CEOs of the Health Boards were invited to participate in cross-border work on mental health and deafness, a locum consultant psychiatrist began working, two days a week, in Northern Ireland, supported by a community psychiatric nurse. Both had signing skills and experience of working with deaf people with mental illness. The service was provided in the South in 2005 and then came the appointment in August of a permanent full-time consultant, Dr. Margaret du Feu, for the whole island.
There is such a fresh imagination at work in this new service with its dynamic focus on how to best meet the needs of the patient. A heartfelt thank you to all those people and organisations on both sides of the border who have created this much-needed new service and brought at last, light and hope into very lost lives.
I know your work will be vindicated and rewarded by healthier, happier lives and I hope it will be rewarded too by a more responsive and spontaneous community wide involvement in making those lives really feel that they count.
It now gives me great pleasure to officially launch the All Ireland Mental Health and Deafness Service.
Go raibh maith agaibh.