CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

Despite the fact that mental illness is the most common health condition on the island – affecting every fourth citizen – it has long been treated as the ‘Cinderella’ sector of the health services in both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. In this report Dr Patricia Clarke looks at the context and challenges to the transformation of mental health on the island to make it person-centred and provided with seamless community-based services. Recent separate but parallel reports on mental health policy in the two jurisdictions both concluded that this was required. She compares these two main mental health policy documents, the Bamford Review in Northern Ireland and A Vision for Change in the Republic of Ireland, and identifies similarities and differences in policy and research approaches across the border. She finds that 80% of publicly-funded mental health research in the Republic and 57% in the UK takes place in universities.