What price tag does this Government put on a human life?

As a mother of a son with a serious mental illness in Ireland I have to ask the question, ‘What price tag does this Government put on a human life?’

I have one child, my son, my life. He was never sick, always happy go lucky and a joy to raise in the suburbs of Finglas where we live.  At 21 my son started showing signs of being unwell, depressed, and withdrawn and basically just not himself. He was in a very low mood over a period of time.

On the 21st of February 2012 a day like any other, but what was to unfold that day would change his life and mine forever, my son tried to take his own life. I will never forget the despair in his eyes; blank, dead, lifeless, no will to live and I felt helpless.

I took him to A&E at 5.30pm and after 11 hours he was admitted at 4.30am. I remember walking out of the Psychiatric Unit in Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown and hearing the door shut after me with locks on it, feeling such pain, anger, frustration and questioning how had this happened? Why my son? Every possible feeling of negativity ran through my brain and I was numb.

What was to unfold over the next number of years was admission after admission, to date 14 in total, and weeks and months on end.  In April of 2014 I couldn’t wake my son on a Monday morning, he had taken an overdose, his fifth attempt on his life and I took him to A&E.

After hours in A&E I was told that there were no beds and I asked them to source a bed in any surrounding hospital but was told there were none and we were turned away from A&E.

I rang everywhere the following day Tuesday, Wednesday and still nothing and in pure frustration I rang TV3, who asked me would I go on the following morning show.

I thought to myself how could I go on national television and beg for a basic human right which should have been made available to my son and just then it hit me. Was my son the only person being turned away, feeling suicidal? And so I made the decision to go on the following morning.

I met Shari McDaid, Director of Mental Health Reform, in the TV3 studios that day as she was going on with me and she gave me the strength to go and highlight this issue that was not only affecting my son but so many others.

I held a protest at the Dáil that day and was given a press statement from the PNA (Psychiatric Nurses Association) who put a motion in supporting my plight as a mother of a son who was suicidal and turned away from A&E. I was supported then and still to this day by Mental Health Reform and their amazing team, and also by so many members of the public with their own harrowing stories of how the system was and still is letting their loved ones down.

The following day a bed became available. My son didn’t want to go to hospital at that stage but he was so very unwell.   He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and we had to wait until that night because there was just one Calpa team throughout the island of Ireland. The Calpa team come to your home to bring your loved one to hospital, and for any parent or family member this is a very emotionally tough time and extremely upsetting, as you feel you are betraying your loved one and criminalising them because the Gardaí are also present.

That year in 2014, there was a 15 million cut to the mental health budget. My son’s experience was a direct result of this cut. He and many more were turned away, and with the heaviest of heart I say this – some we know have become a suicide statistic.

I have to acknowledge that when my son is an inpatient at Connolly Psychiatric Unit and while out in the community with his mental health care team, he gets the very best of care.  My campaigning never was or will be against the frontline staff, Doctors, Nurses, etc. It is the Government who is at fault for their cuts to the mental health budget in the past as well as the recent 12 million cut that was announced. These funds must be put back into a service that is already in crisis.

We have an epidemic in our society and it’s suicide, but yet the Governments past and present continue to cut the mental health budget. What is this the price our loved ones pay? Do people living with mental illness/issues not matter to them? Do they even care?

We are losing 500 plus a year to suicide and we are continually witnessing cut after cut to the mental health budget.  What is needed as is outlined in the 10 year old document Vision for Change, is 24 hour 7 days a week Crisis Intervention Centres in Primary Health Care facilities throughout this country.

What started out for me and my son has become much more and I have continued and will continue to campaign for and with Mental Health Reform. That is why we have decided to do The Walk of HOPE into Light in Finglas 21st into 22nd May at 4.30am in Tolka Valley Park (Scribblestown Entrance) to fund raise for Mental Health Reform. All are welcome to come join us. We need to keep lobbying and campaigning this Government until they sit up and realise we are not going away.