Suzanne Crowe: People with severe mental illness will be failed by proposed new law

Psychosis robs people of their ability to understand how ill they are. If enacted, the Mental Health Bill will mean people stripped of insight by their illness will be able to refuse treatment

Dr Crowe writes that a good intention — to protect patients' rights — has led to a Mental Health Bill which would deny people with psychosis treatments they need if they choose to decline them: It's the illness and not the treatment that robs them of their autonomy. Picture: iStock

My mother reminded me recently of a warm summer’s evening when I was a child, when the neighbour’s son Mark jumped over our garden wall and ran straight through our house, with two gardaí chasing him.

Mark was in his early 20s and had schizophrenia. Every year or so he became acutely mentally ill. That night he howled and tore at his hair as the guards restrained him.