"In the Journal of Mental Science in October 1894 Thomas Drapes, Resident Medical Superintendent of the District Asylum, Enniscorthy, delivered a paper ‘On the Alleged Increase of Insanity in Ireland’. Ireland, he pointed out, ‘possesses the unique and unenviable distinction of a continuously increasing amount of insanity with a continuously decreasing population’ and he then went on to a thoroughgoing analysis of what statistics were available to him and to comparisons between the Irish and English scenes. ...In summary, Drapes claimed: ‘The net result, then, of this examination is to show that, while there is an undoubted increase in occurring insanity, as indicated by the records of first admissions, by far the larger part of the apparent increase in insanity generally is due to accumulation, and that the seeming preponderance of insanity in Ireland, as compared to England, is fictitious, and depends entirely on the greater amount of accumulation in Ireland, occasioned by the lower death-rate in that country, and (possibly) the lower rate of discharge of the unrecovered." (http://www.hrb.ie/storage/publications/hrbpublications/mentalhealth/Mental%20Illness%20in%20Ireland.pdf
MENTAL ILLNESS IS IRELAND 1750-1922 : accessed 10 May 2009).