Mental health and suicide case
Deputy Fitzpatrick raised the death of a young man from Dundalk after repeated hospital attendances and asked what is being done about mental health and self-harm. The Tánaiste and Ceann Comhairle urged caution about discussing individual cases, while the Tánaiste stressed the seriousness of youth mental health and ongoing service investment.
A Dundalk women, Sinéad Browne, whose only son took his own life last month, wants to know why her son was sent home from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital twice, despite his saying he intended to kill himself. Ian Browne, 25, from Dundalk had a letter from his general practitioner asking that he be admitted to the hospital as he was going to commit suicide and was self-harming very seriously. This young man was looking for help. He went to his doctor and told his doctor he was going to end his life, his doctor wrote a serious letter to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, and on two separate occasions the hospital sent him home. The doctor feels he may have had benzodiazepines in his system. Is the Tánaiste telling me that throwing a young person or any person out on the streets and telling him or her to come back in three weeks is not appalling? The amount of money being invested in the HSE is unreal. In 2017 almost 400 suicides were registered in Ireland, eight out of ten of which were men. In addition, the National Self-Harm Registry Ireland recorded-----
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-----that 11,600 presentations were made over self-harming.
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What are we doing about mental health and self-harming? We are spending millions and millions on the HSE. What is this family to do? They did everything right. Their only son-----
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-----committed suicide. He needed help. We are failing our society.
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I went to that funeral and looked at that poor woman straight in the eye, and all she said was "What happened to my son?"
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A Cheann Comhairle, I think we should be careful about raising individual cases such as this in the Dáil.
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These are very delicate and difficult issues for families to deal with and we should think about how we speak about them and the language we use. Mental health among young people is a very serious issue and this Government has debated how we can improve services and increase funding, both of which are happening, but we should be very careful about talking about individual cases.