Concern at treatment of mental health

Groups and activists have described the suicide of a 17-year-old boy who had just spent 26 days in a mental-health unit as further evidence of how such services are over-reliant on medication and outdated hospital models.

Dan Hogan, from Donnybrook, Dublin, died in July 2014, having described in his diary how he was “traumatised” by his stay as an involuntary patient at St Joseph’s Adolescent Inpatient Unit in Fairview.

This week, at the inquest into his death, his mother, Elaine Clear, read from his journal: “Hospital was torture and traumatising and was physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting, like nothing I have experienced before. I felt alone and that no one close to me understood what I was going through”.

Ms Clear said her son hated taking the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam as it “dulled his brain”.

“Dan told me later that if this was the treatment for his illness, then he was fucked. He took his life three weeks later,” said Ms Clear.

“All we are asking is that mental-health services treat young people in Dan’s situation with more enlightened consideration.”

Dan had also been prescribed the SSRI Prozac and risperidone, an anti- psychotic.

Lydia Sapouna, of Critical Voices Network Ireland and the Applied Social Studies Department at University College Cork, said: “This case was so wrong but, unfortunately, not an exception.

“The response in this country to adults and children in distress is far too limited; it’s typically medication and hospitalisation but these can be more unhelpful than helpful,” she said.

“Rather than putting people in hospital, we need to look at other options such as the crisis house model for people who have acute distress, something similar to the Slí Eile project being run in Churchtown, near Charleville in Co Cork, where they created a therapeutic environment on a farm that supports individuals in recovery.

“People in serious distress need to feel safe and they need to feel understood.

“This is not about demonising staff at other units but unfortunately, most in- patient units are about monitoring behaviour and seeing emotional distress as biochemical.

“We will go nowhere in this country with mental health if we continue to do this. We need to think outside the medical model.”

Activist, Leonie Fennell agreed: “We are very backwards here compared to the UK, for example. How is it OK to be giving a young child a cocktail of drugs like that?”

A spokesman for St Joseph’s Adolescent In-patient Unit was unavailable for comment.