Woman wrote to minister and HSE over detention
The woman has spent almost all of the past four years, since aged 14, in psychiatric facilities here and the UK with little improvement in her condition but the HSE wants an order continuing her detention in the UK because it believes she is a high suicide risk and is safest there, the High Court heard.
The woman’s situation raises serious and what her counsel described as “profound” issues under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights concerning the High Court’s powers to make orders for the involuntary detention of adults with personality disorders when the Mental Health Acts excludes such detention for adults with personality disorders.
In her poem, the woman asks: “How can you be so afraid of an eighteen year old? Too much risk of finding her cold.” She says “Stop hesitating, because it’s a disgrace.” She pleads to be allowed back. “Let me come back, let me have a chance.”
Mr Justice Seamus Noonan was told the HSE considers, based on medical evidence, the woman is a serious suicide risk and there is no suitable facility to keep her safe here. He agreed her letters to the minister and junior minister for health were “intelligent” and described her poem as “sophisticated”.
Gerard Durcan, counsel for the woman, argued the court has no power to make a “most serious” order affecting her liberty and autonomy, subjecting her to compulsory medication and treatment, detention in locked wards and observation for periods as frequent as every five minutes.
Mr Justice Noonan remarked yesterday it was not clear to him why the woman could not be kept safe here. Tim O’Leary, for the HSE, said the situation would be “completely different” if she fell under the Mental Health Acts because she could be kept in a secure setting.
The case continues.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
