Why people turn to A&E to get help for their mental health

Tony Reilly is a volunteer at the People's Kitchen in north Belfast , a place he used to turn to for help.

"I was in crisis, I was in a real crisis" Tony told UTV. He felt he had to go to an Emergency Department after years of struggling with mental health problems.

"Personally, I'm not one to open up about my problems, but I just felt really suicidal."

Tony isn't the only one who has shown up in an emergency department in distress. UTV can reveal around 25 people in mental distress arrive into EDs every day in the Belfast area alone. That's approximately 730 patients every month.

Cllr Paul McCusker of the People's Kitchen says the figures are "frightening", and reflect a major problem with mental health in Belfast and beyond.

"There's many reasons for that. There's a lot of social factors that impact on people's lives.

"They're in crisis, and they attend A&E. So those numbers, we know have been increasing year on year.

"The reason why people present to A&E can be addressed. We talk about prevention, early intervention; all key things in someone's life if they become distressed.

"Quite often we're dealing with a crisis. We need to prevent the crisis happening in the first place."

Services to help people in crisis do exist outside of EDs, however many have faced funding challenges in recent years.

West Wellbeing is a suicide prevention charity that provides one to one counselling for those in need.

Like many other charities, they've seen their funding cut.

Tiarnan McCarthy, who received counselling through West Wellbeing, believes these services are more needed than ever.

"There's more suicides every week than there ever has been. There's been suicides through the roof.

"I think a lot of that is due to the lack of co-operation with our government.

"The buck has to stop somewhere."

With the demand so high, those like Eilish Craig who work at West Wellbeing, understand why people end up in A&E.

"We just don't have any funding and we can't sustain the service.

"It's very, very frustrating, because we want to help as many people as possible.

"When people are coming and begging for help, you know, there's only so much that we can do."

Peter May, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health, said that the department has "definitely seen a growth" in challenges with mental health due to the pandemic.

"A mental health strategy is in place, it's a ten year strategy. We've not been able to completely fund it, but we are taking a number of important steps that are helping to improve the situation.

"The speed of the progress would be quicker if we had more to be able to invest in that area. But we are making some progress."

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