GARDAÍ have yet to begin excavating a site where the body of a missing Alzheimer’s patient may have been hidden for more than 30 years, two months after a coroner’s court decision to re-launch the search.

A woman charged with murdering her husband 23 years ago signed him into a mental institute two years before his death, their doctor told her trial.

THE Irish Psychiatric Association (IPA) has called on the Government to clarify whether the €43 million announced in yesterday’s budget for investment in mental health projects includes money already raised through the sale of psychiatric institutions.

MORE than 1,400 mental health patients are continuing to live in inappropriate conditions in old psychiatric hospitals despite a damning report more than a year ago urging the Government to close them.

The family of a woman who vanished from a hospital almost 30 years ago are to press for an inquest into her presumed death, they said today.

A PSYCHIATRIC hospital with the highest rate of staff assaults in the country cannot take on extra nurses because of cutbacks, unions have claimed.