26 patients moved from mental hospital to prison
MENTALLY ill patients are being locked up in prison because there are no beds for them at the country’s largest psychiatric hospital.
It has emerged 26 people deemed to be a danger to themselves and others are in the cells due to a shortage of beds at the Central Mental Hospital.
There are now safety concerns for warders and inmates as those who have acute psychiatric conditions are “unmedicated and untreated”.
The hospital’s medical director Professor Harry Kennedy told RTE a shortage of beds means people on the waiting list “get more and more ill, and it is more difficult to treat them when we eventually do get them in”. He said: “As a State we are failing severely mentally ill people, they’re in prison instead of being in care, this is not good.
“Although all of those people have a history of serious violence, it is also very likely they will seriously harm themselves as the next thing that happens.
“That is not as easy to manage while they are untreated in a prison, where as Central Mental Hospital
we are entirely designed to manage that while they are here.”
“So the simple clinical and humanitarian obligation to look after extremely ill people isn’t being met.”
Prof Kennedy admitted he is failing to meet his own legal obligation to provide a safe treatment facility for people with severe mental illness. He said as an administrator he was effectively breaking the law by not providing a bed for a severely ill patient when ordered to do so by the courts.
Prof Kennedy also said he had been advised by HSE lawyers that there was a chance he himself could end up in jail for contempt of court for not meeting his obligations.
He told RTE the hospital was operating “at the edge” of safe levels, and did not have a full complement of nurses.
The expert said: “We have the doctors, psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists to staff it, but we don’t have the nurses.
“We could use it, but we cannot find the nurses to staff it.”