Mental health – a mother’s plea for her son

Paul Murphy
The stark reality of the shortcomings in mental health services throughout this region was illustrated when a desperate mother spoke about the trauma suffered by her family as they struggle to deal with her son’s severe mental health difficulties. The meeting in Navan and organised by Sinn Fein TD Johnny Guirke heard about services in Navan and Drogheda under stress by the sheer numbers of people seeking some kind of help. The meeting was attended by Sinn Fein TD Darren O’Rourke, TD Sorca Clarke and Independent Cllr Alan Lawes.

Deputy Guirke introduced a woman to the meeting and asked that her name be withheld for privacy reasons. The TD said “All he needs is a little bit of help and he is finding it very hard to get it”. His mother said her son was in his 20’s and one of five children. He achieved high honours at school but about five years ago his best friend took his own life. That had hit him very hard.

He did some work with his father and did the things that young people did, socialising with his friends before and after Covid and had a girlfriend. After his friends death he started smoking cannabis. He had smoked at most two joints in 2025 and that was because he was out and about in Drogheda and Navan and someone gave them to him.

However, he was off all substances at this stage but has been very unwell for the last two years. He has been in Cross Lanes Drogheda* once but then had been admitted for three nights. He wanted to stay longer but they said they could not keep him because “he had no mental disorder.” 

“He has been told he has “borderline personality disorder and their blaming substance usage for that.”

“The answer they say is not medication but that he needs to go to this place in Navan but it’s very difficult to get him to go because we live a long way from there. He has to get a lift there and I’ve taken him there three times in the last three years, which was a huge fact to even get him to get up and go. He is so ill. He doesn’t want to eat and has been suicidal many times”.

A MOTHERS PLEA FOR HELP

Her voice breaking, the woman said “He is still not getting any help”. She said that at one stage a health professional told her son that people with borderline personality disorder “usually end up in prison” and when her son asked why was that the professional replied “because of antisocial behaviour”. She said he is living alone in a house. It had got to the stage where it was “like going to the zoo to see an animal”. The family drop in food to him. He had become aggressive. “He need care. He is now lying in one room in the house with no heat. He lies on the couch most days and is unclothed. He has a throw which he sometimes puts on him. He no longer cooks for himself. “He doesn’t want to eat, doesn’t want to live, he will say there all day until someone brings him food. He is lying there freezing cold with a throw on him and doesn’t want to charge his mobile phone. He knows himself he is ill, he has made calls to the 999 service!

Owen from Meath Jigsaw addressing the meeting. Deputy Darren O’Rourke, Deputy Johnny Guirke, Deputy Sorca Clarke and Cllr Alan Lawes also spoke at the meeting in the Newgrange Hotel. Thursday night, 19th February 2026.

“He has been to Navan, Cavan, Mullingar, Drogheda. It is absolutely horrendous for me and with him in A&E for 10-12 hours. I went with him to Mullingar at midnight and he wasn’t seen until 2pm the following day”. She said he had been in Cavan Hospital and there is “an absolutely disgraceful service down there – it seems they cannot take him because he is not from their area”. St Pat’s was the best place for him, she said, but the institution would not take him “because after six weeks how do we get the money (€3,500)?”

HEALTH SERVICE ”DISGRACEFUL”

She said it was “disgraceful” that they had to sit around for hours in an A&E. “We don’t go any more because it is so erratic, so dangerous. I had to engage a private psychiatrist (fee €450 for one hour) and given a diagnosis of ‘agitated depression’ and two tablets. He was given extra tablets and after one week he went totally crazy. He took to the roads with no clothes in the month of January and the neighbours rang the guards because it was so strange to see someone walking around with no clothes”. He had been between Cuan Mhuire and Cross Lanes. “He is in his 20s now, he had everything as a child and didn’t want for anything and he is just totally neglected by everyone”.

Deputy Clarke said that families were trying to do their best for their loved ones but it was a constant fight to try and access service and it was wearing them down. “We need to be mindful that the people who give the care need care themselves, particularly when it comes to mental health”. She said she had travelled across the country in an effort to find out what people wanted by way of services for people with mental health difficulties.

MENTAL ILLNESS CRISIS NEEDS SUPPORT 

Cllr Lawes said people with mental health difficulties often ended up on the streets because they could not get access to mental health services. He said there was a very good psychiatric service in Navan and the professionals there made themselves available at weekends and on bank holidays. It was a great service but the problem was getting access to it. “If you have a mental crisis today, you’re on a waiting list for God knows how long.

”We need to look at the services we have and see how they can be expanded. We need more health professionals. I dealt with one family whose son was on the streets of Navan with a complete breakdown and we had to get him sectioned 25 times. The guards, to be fair to them, are not trained to know whether a person should be sectioned. We were lucky that that young man didn’t die on the streets of Navan. He got the care he needed and he is no longer on the streets”.

1320 PEOPLE TURNED AWAY 

He had another case where a woman was suffering mental stress. Even though she had a letter from her GP and psychiatrist and was expressing suicide ideation “Cross Lanes Drogheda* refused to take her”. “I have heard too many stories from families whose relatives were turned away from Cross Lanes. I asked for further information on it and I was told that in 2024 1,320 people experiencing mental health crisis were turned away from Cross Lanes. We don’t know how many of them passed away or committed suicide. A lot of people turn up at Drogheda A&E and are sent across to Cross Lanes. They could be there 12 or 15 hours before anyone asks them their name and they end up walking away.”

Deputy Guirke said that part of a solution was to get people to speak up about their experiences, join a WhatsApp group so that they could go to Leinster House as a group and express their feelings there.

* Cross Lanes Drogheda -Department of Psychiatry is a purpose–built acute mental health unit, which opened in 2016. It provides acute in-patient services for both the Louth and Meath community mental health teams and consists of general adult acute admission beds, high observation unit beds, and psychiatry of old age beds. All bedrooms are single, en suite rooms. Maximum occupancy including number of residents and involuntary patients is 46.