PhD Students

Over the past four decades Mental Health service delivery across the developed world has undergone dramatic change. In Ireland this modernisation policy was mapped out in documents such as Planning For The Future (1985). The main thrust of these policy initiatives was to bring about a process of "deinstitutionalisation" whereby treatment would move away from the large isolated Mental Hospitals towards a new integrated community based service. However there is some evidence that the adoption and implementation of these policies is spatially uneven (Report of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals, 1999). This study has two aims; firstly to compare selected Irish Health Boards to test whether there is a regional or spatial variation in the manner in which these modernisation policies have been implemented. Secondly the study will examine factors, which might explain such regional variation, such as demography and settlement patterns, historic and economic factors, budgetary policy as well as local political and clinical cultures.

This research is funded by NIRSA.