The 58 year old Sligo farmer, Mr Eamonn Healy, and the 26 year old Dublin mother, Katherine Dwyer, probably had very little in common during their lifetimes. He was quiet and retiring, a social drinker with a pleasant personality. She was a troubled, and sometimes troublesome, young woman and an alcoholic.
What links them is that both committed suicide a relatively short time after leaving the psychiatric hospitals in which they were patients. Mr Healy's family saw little or no improvement in him when he was discharged from St Columba's Hospital, Sligo, after 10 days. He took his own life four days later.
The High Court this week found that the North Western Health Board had been negligent in its dealings with Mr Healy. The person responsible for a psychiatric patient, said Mr Justice Flood, should satisfy himself that the patient was in "firm remission" and this could not have been the case with Mr Healy.
Katherine Dwyer's case came before no court. What is known is that this unfortunate woman had been in contact with the psychiatric services for months, had made many suicide attempts and had killed her father, yet was not committed to a psychiatric hospital for medium term or long term treatment.
She had voluntarily entered St Loman's psychiatric hospital in west Dublin after the death of her father but signed herself out within days. She entered the hospital again following a suicide attempt on Christmas Eve and was discharged - at her own request, according to the Eastern Health Board - in time for her dinner on Christmas Day. Although contact was maintained with her as an outpatient of St Loman's, she was dead within a fortnight.
The removal of psychiatric care from institutions and the move to the provision of psychiatric services in the community has compared to experience elsewhere worked relatively well in this country. But if this enlightened policy is to be maintained, the psychiatric services must ensure that those who need medium term and long term in patient care can receive it.
This, of course, does not suggest that the problems of an individual can be resolved inside a psychiatric ward. Observers must also wonder whether the out patient services, as presently organised, and with the resources available to them, can deliver the level of care needed by people with multiple problems or who are very seriously depressed. Is enough done actively to link people leaving hospital with self help groups such as Recovery, Grow and Aware?
It is vital that the implications of these tragic cases be studied so that we may learn whatever lessons we can. We have no social services inspectorate in this State despite many calls for such a body which could carry out dispassionately the necessary follow up investigations. Everything that can be done should be done to prevent further tragedies like those of Eamonn Healy and Katherine Dwyer.