HSE APOLOGY AFTER DEATH IN MENTAL HEALTH UNIT
FAMILY SAYS MENTAL HEALTH UNIT WAS NOT SAFEST PLACE FOR KARL
THE HSE has apologised to the family of 30-year-old Karl Collins who died tragically in St Columba’s Mental Health Unit in April 2017 after seeking help for anxiety and insomnia.
A jury returned a verdict of suicide late Monday evening at Sligo Coroner’s Court.
In a statement afterwards, his family said “all the messaging from Government is about asking for help. Our brother did this: he looked for help in the most obvious place - a Mental Health Hospital.
“To most people that is the safest place a person in a mental state of distress would go. Tragically for Karl this was not the case. It is shocking to us that a self-admitted patient could be able to take his own life within the very walls of a Mental Health Hospital.”
THE family of young Karl Collins have said he should still be alive today and living life to the full.
In a statement after a verdict of suicide was returned late Monday evening, they said the most troubling aspect of his death, was that “he had sought help from the experts, but still endued up dying alone and in terrible emotional distress.”
Treating psychiatrist on duty the day young Karl Collins died tragically in St Columba’s Mental Health Unit has insisted there was nothing in his assessment of him to make him think it appropriate to move him to a High Observation Unit.
The 30-year-old surf instructor had only a few hours earlier told nursing staff he had taken 10-12 sleeping tablets because he “wanted to end it all.”
Psychiatrist Dr Edmund O’Mahony told Sligo Coroner Mr Eamon McGowan at the Coroner’s Court that he met with Karl Collins at 11am that same morning to discuss his condition.
“When I probed him on that, he said by wanting to end it all, he said he wanted to get some sleep,” said Dr O’Mahony.
The young Dublin native died tragically on 3rd April 2017 at St Columba’s Mental Health Unit.
He had self-presented at the unit on Saturday morning 1st April, complaining of extreme anxiety, chaotic thinking and insomnia.
By 1.30pm Monday 3rd April, he was dead. The HSE has apologised to his family. His mother Irene, his brother John and sisters Aisling, Roslyn, Jennifer and Maria and in-laws were present at Sligo Courthouse hoping to get answers as to why he died.
Dr O’Mahony told the court that when he met Karl around 11am that morning, some six hours after he had allegedly taken the overdose of sleeping tablets, he seemed “anxious, restless, articulate, intelligent.”
“He said he wanted to end his life, then said no, he wanted to get sleep. I asked him if he wanted to end his life and he said ‘no’, he didn’t,” said Dr O’Mahony.
Karl told doctors he had attempted suicide in 2011 and anti-depressants made him suicidal. He asked that his family not be contacted about the alleged overdose of sleeping tablets and asked for a transfer to St Patrick’s Mental Health Services in
Dublin. Dr O’Mahony agreed to this and to contact his family.
“What more must a person do to be deemed a suicide risk than what Karl did?” asked Barrister for the Collins family Mr Keith O’Grady BL.
“In our assessment of Karl there was nothing to make me think that was an option,” he said.
The case concluded late last evening after a verdict of suicide was returned.