There has been a significant decline in the use of restrictive practices – such as seclusion and physical restraint – across Irish mental health services in the past seven years.<\/p>\n
A report by the Inspector of Mental Health Services shows that the number of restrictive episodes in approved mental health centres fell by 62% from 2018 to 2024.<\/p>\n
There has also been a 91% reduction in seclusion and physical restraint in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) over the same period.<\/p>\n
In January 2023, the Mental Health Commission banned the use of mechanical restraint on children.<\/p>\n
There was an 80% decrease in seclusion episodes and a 57% decrease in physical restraint episodes in CAMHS approved centres between 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n
In the report, Professor Jim Lucey said children were “specifically protected” from restrictive practices in Irish mental health care through a human rights-based approach.<\/p>\n
Overall, the rate of decline in seclusion episodes in 2023 and 2024 was almost twice that seen in the preceding four years.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the rate of reduction in the number of people physically restrained between 2023 and 2024 was twice that seen in the preceding four years.<\/p>\n
The majority of episodes of physical restraint in 2023 (97.4%) and 2024 (97.9%) were ten minutes or less.<\/p>\n
Over three quarters lasted five minutes or less.<\/p>\n
Two approved centres reported use of mechanical restraint in 2023, and one in 2024.<\/p>\n
Revised rules introduced a maximum duration of four hours for an order of mechanical restraint for immediate risk.<\/p>\n
All episodes in 2023 and 2024 were described as being used for “transfer purposes to and from court\/hospital” where there was an immediate threat of serious harm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been a significant decline in the use of restrictive practices – such as seclusion and physical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":["post-34336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}