ALONE Submission to UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) Review 2025 Mental Health Reform
ALONE, as a member of Mental Health Reform, submitted a brief survey ahead of the 2025 review of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD).
In this survey, ALONE stressed the importance of three major policy areas that should be prioritised in Mental Health Reform’s submission to the UNCRPD.
- Progress the Mental Health Bill 2024 into law
- Deliver mental health services equitably across the country
- Fund and implement existing mental health policies – Sharing the Vision & the National Framework for Recovery in Mental Health 2024-2028.
This submission outlines the lack of implementation of policies to support older people’s mental health. While Sharing the Vision contains several relevant actions, including a ‘commitment to the development and implementation of a range of actions to achieve the goals of the National Positive Ageing Strategy’, at the time of this letter this list of actions had not been published.
Additionally, this submission outlines a lack of equitable service around the country, a lack of acute mental health beds for older people (as of 2020 there were only 50% of the beds recommended in A Vision for Change), and a lack of staffing of specialist psychiatric services leading to long wait lists and less equitable services.
Finally, this submission outlines the high prevalence of loneliness amongst older people in Ireland and the significant gap in research on mental health literacy in Ireland in understanding the needs of older people and help seeking behaviours.
