Care required - Approach to mental health

It is every parent’s nightmare to witness the death of their child. It is particularly tragic when it is a life that has scarcely begun and is prematurely ended by the child’s own hand.

Dan Hogan, a 17-year-old from Donnybrook in Dublin, spent just 26 days in a mental health institution before killing himself. He had been put on a cocktail of anti-psychotic medication and hospitalised for his mental distress.

At the inquest into his death this week, his mother, Elaine Clear, read from his journal in which he described his time in hospital as ‘torture’.