A culture of control

Irish Times
12 -9 - 2011


Irish people have been too willing to surrender their civic responsibilities to a variety of authorities and elites and then to claim ignorance when abuses arise. The latest, damning indictment of this tendency involves the manner in which psychiatric hospitals were used for generations to stifle social dissent and incarcerate difficult or unwanted individuals.

The reports provide further disturbing evidence of how the State, its agents and the professional classes dealt harshly with vulnerable citizens. Much of society found it either convenient to ignore what was going on or to actively utilise these inhumane facilities.

Repression and control have been consistent patterns in the way society has responded to internal pressures. The Great Famine and changes to farming and inheritance practices fostered the growth of various institutions to accommodate indigent and distressed individuals. Unlike other countries, however, Ireland provided for the automatic and involuntary incarceration of perceived lunatics on very broad and subjective grounds.
By the 1950s, this State led the world in the incidence of psychiatric illness as families and various authorities used a hugely expanded system of mental hospitals to lock up troublesome or non-conforming members of society. Religious orders have been rightly criticised for the brutality and inhumane treatment inflicted by some of their members on children and women in State-funded residential institutions. But RTÉ’s documentary series on psychiatric hospitals, Behind the Walls , shows clearly that such treatment was also commonplace in State-run institutions, overseen by prominent medical practitioners, where barbaric therapies were routinely employed.

Complicity between the State, its elites and the church in directing and controlling all of these institutions was a defining feature. The number of citizens detained in psychiatric hospitals peaked at 21,000 in the 1960s and has since fallen to 2,800. The number in prison on the other hand averaged about 600 in those decades but has since risen to 4,500. Such figures lend weight to complaints from prison chaplains that jails are being used as dumping grounds for people with mental illness. Like the old psychiatric hospitals, they have become dangerous, overcrowded and unsanitary places where punishment, rather than remedial treatment, is the norm.

An excessive disciplinary code pervades all aspects of society, from the political whip system that threatens TDs with immediate expulsion if they fail to toe the party line to controls imposed by State agencies, trade unions and professional bodies. The herd mentality and cosy elitism that recently helped to break the banking and building sectors offers a salutary lesson in the need for an acceptance of alternative views, outside expertise and robust analysis. Speaking out should be regarded as a sign of civic maturity rather than a cause for punishment. Legislation to protect whistleblowers is finally being prepared, after decades of procrastination. It is a small first step and society has a long road to travel.