Family who sought help from youth mental health service had ‘devastating’ experience, says father

A man whose young son was admitted with an eating disorder to the psychiatric unit in Crumlin’s children’s hospital has said his experience of the child psychiatric services was “devastating” and caused enduring damage to the young boy.

The man, who asked not to be identified, is one of hundreds of families that are suing the mental health services because of alleged inadequate treatment of their children. He was speaking in the wake of a report published this week by the chief inspector of mental health services, Dr Susan Finnerty, who said parents seeking help cannot be assured the service they will get will be safe, effective and evidence based. In a blistering assessment of the services, Dr Finnerty said the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs) “is creaking at the seams, with increasing risk to children for whom the service is provided”.

The man’s son was admitted to Crumlin children’s hospital in 2017 because his body mass index had reached a critical level and he was put on a feeding tube. He was diagnosed as having anorexia and put on “highly dangerous antipsychotic medication” that changed the child from being gentle to being a highly aggressive person, the man said.

“They immediately said he has anorexia nervosa but that is very rare in young males. They should have spotted that there was something not quite right about it, yet they put him on all these antipsychotic medications.”

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Consent was never sought before his son was put on the medication, the man said, and the purpose of the drugs was never explained to them. “He immediately became very aggressive.”

The boy was kept in the hospital for 5½ months. The eating disorder was resolved after about six weeks but the boy remained very unsettled. “Their response to that was to put him on more antipsychotic medication.”

Later that year, after the boy had been released from hospital and was being treated by the Camhs in Dún Laoghaire, the family eventually got to bring him as an outpatient to Prof Fiona McNicholas, a consultant psychiatrist at Crumlin.

She diagnosed the boy as having obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a condition that is treated with cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and a mild antidepressant, the father said.

“They weren’t really up to speed with what OCD was. It is a serious mental illness, and it can lead to eating disorders. Basically, it is a brain illness, it is not a general anxiety disorder, and it can be fixed through CBT.”

After five months of CBT, which the man said was not easy, the bulk of their son’s debilitating OCD was gone.

“But the real thing that changed everything was all that medication. It just changed him as a person; he was completely different, he was aggressive, violent at times, lashing out.”

Psychologically, his son, who is now in his late teens, can still be disagreeable and aggressive. “It has had a long, difficult impact on us as a family. He is quite difficult to handle sometimes, and we put it down to that, the mix of different drugs they put him on when, you know, his brain hadn’t nearly developed.”

The man said he was very unhappy with the service they received at the hospital, which he felt got worse when the medical staff couldn’t diagnose what his son’s problem was. He believes mental health patients are not treated with the same respect as people suffering from other types of health problems.

He said Prof McNicholas did not have to see them as outpatients and the family are grateful to her that she did. Five months after starting to work on CBT, the boy’s condition was much improved.

“He is off his medication now, but psychologically he is very bruised by this. There is no question. He doesn’t trust anybody with the title psychologist or psychiatrist, and that has created a big problem for us.”

The man is now suing the Health Service Executive arising from the treatment his son received, and is one of more than 350 families currently being represented by Coleman Legal in cases involving alleged inadequate treatment from the youth mental health services.

“It is the lack of clinical ability, that was the shocking thing,” the man said. “They had written him off, but we wouldn’t give up.”