Patient’s visitors being screened, says ex-partner

VISITORS who are allowed in to see a man being involuntary detained in a Cork mental health facility for almost six years are being screened by his doctors, it has been claimed.

John Hunt, 30, has been detained against his will at Carraig Mor for over five years and his story has received considerable media attention.

Gráinne Humphrys, the mother of his four-year-old son, Josh, maintains she has not been allowed in to see John since an RTÉ documentary telling their story aired in September.

“Since I did the TV programme I haven’t seen John. He is calling me asking to bring in his son for a visit because he hasn’t seen Josh in four months.”

She said certain people are allowed to see John, who is earmarked for a move to the Central Mental Hospital, while others who might be seen as a “bad influence” are not.

“People like me who talk about John’s rights and getting him out and speaking out strongly for him are not being allowed in. I don’t have any personal gripes with anyone, but I do think the system is at fault in the way it has treated John.

“They are not communicating with me now so I don’t really know what is going on with his move to Dublin, and if it is still going ahead.”

Service users and families are increasingly speaking out about the power of psychiatry and the exclusion of families. “We need to open the debate and get to a place where there is open dialogue between all parties and no more secrecy around mental health care.”

Meanwhile, service user, researcher and representative on HSE and Mental Health Commission committees, Ciaran Crummey, said fthat or him, being force-medicated was more frightening than being involuntarily detained at such a facility:

“I was forcibly medicated in order to be chemically restrained because I was angry and frustrated at how I was being mistreated.

“I experienced it as an act of gross violation that was far more traumatic than being sectioned. I felt that I was being severely punished. The act of physically restraining someone, removing their trousers by force, and injecting a syringe into a buttock is immensely humiliating and demeaning.

“There is a dearth of evidence around involuntary medication and patients who object to it have no rights to appeal such decisions.”