DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: Detox Centre for Derry must be part of Mental Health strategy

Tamzin White has relaunched the Detox Centre campaign following the death of her mother Louise in January, aged just 40.

Addiction is a scourge that has devastated too many families and communities here and continues to plague our society as Tamzin and her family know only too well, having lost their mother Louise at the age of just 40 last month.

The campaign for a physical detox centre in Derry - a place where people can be taken to fully and properly recover from addiction - stretches back many years. Indeed, the Community Crisis Intervention Service we now have was secured as a result of that campaign. The CCIS is doing vital, life-saving work in this city but much more specialist addiction support is needed to ensure people are not turned away or put on a waiting list that may end up being a death sentence for them. The community here has been shouting from the rooftops about the need for more mental health provision but as yet not enough has been done.

There are great services doing sterling work across the north west, there is just nowhere near enough of them. And because of this the new Mental Health Strategy in the north must indeed, as was mooted in the Council recently, be prioritised. And we must collectively reject it if it fails to radically overhaul what is available at present. Treatment must be accessible at the point of need, swiftly allocated and have post-care support in place. The lives of too many of our loved ones are at stake here. Experience has taught us we must fight for health services in our corner of the world. Hopefully that is changing. But we now need a concerted push to make sure that the voices of Tamzin and her family and all those other families for whom such services have come too late is heard loud and clear in the corridors of power and reaches the ears and the hearts of those who can make it happen. It is encouraging that Tamzin’s call is now on Robin Swann’s radar. There is no greater expert on mental health and addiction than those who are living with it, have lived with it or who have been bereaved by it. To fail them now would be unforgivable.