HSE sued over discharged mother’s suicide

THE family of a mother of three is suing the HSE after she took her own life less than 24 hours after her discharge from hospital following a failed overdose.

It is alleged that Josephine Cloonan’s medical history was not taken into account, and that if the psychiatrist on duty had admitted her, she ‘would have been saved’.

Her husband Angelo Cloonan has sued the HSE West and psychiatrist Dr Kishan Browne, who at the time was employed as a registrar at University Hospital Galway.

The defendants deny the allegations of negligence. They say Mr and Mrs Cloonan and Dr Browne discussed treatment options and that they agreed Mrs Cloonan would attend a day hospital.

Mr Cloonan, 53, told the High Court his wife had been attending counselling for around a year for stress she had suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse. He said that on April 17, 2011, he found his wife ‘dopey in bed’. He said his children told him she had overdosed on tablets. They brought her to University Hospital Galway.

Dr Browne spoke to Mr Cloonan and his wife at around 10.30am, Mr Cloonan said. He added: ‘He said my wife was going to be fine, and it was okay to go home. I said that she definitely wasn’t right.’ Mr Cloonan felt he was ‘fobbed off’. He was given the telephone number for a day unit, he said. ‘I had no choice but to bring her home,’ he said.

He said the next day he was woken in his bedsit by a phone call from his daughter, Jennifer, who was screaming ‘Mammy’s dead, Mammy’s dead’. When he returned to the house, ‘she was lying on the ground in the shed’, he said. Under cross-examination, he was asked if he had ever made a complaint about the refusal of Dr Browne to keep his wife in the hospital. ‘I went to my solicitor eventually,’ Mr Cloonan said. ‘I was in such shock that I didn’t even want to go near the hospital.’ The case continues.