"Hell On Earth" - one woman's experience of Irish psychiatric care

This time last year, Leona O’Callaghan was a reasonably happy, hardworking businesswomen and mother of three. A well-known figure around Limerick city because of her businesses - Kids Playbus Ltd and the Dream Teddy Bear workshop – she had suffered from depression and was regularly seeing a psychologist, but in her own words “was getting on with my life with no real trouble at all”. “Then a “traumatic experience” from her childhood resurfaced, bringing with it flashbacks, panic attacks and “very negative thoughts. I was having unhealthy fantasies about ending my life, I felt that I was a burden to everybody, I was horrible to them, argumentative, a nightmare”. She eventually decided that the best way to stop being a burden was to kill herself. And so shortly before Christmas last year, she took an overdose and stood on the side of a bridge in Limerick, preparing to jump. She was rescued by a local suicide prevention service which was set up in the city a few years ago to combat a huge rise in the numbers of people taking their lives in the city. They spotted her on the bridge, talked her down and brought her to the A & E at Limerick University Hospital. She was eventually sent to the Hospital’s psychiatric unit, known as 5B. What followed, she says" was "a hell on earth". She was left sitting around for hours on end for nothing to do, there was no proper psychiatric care, patients attacked nurses, who simply couldn't cope. Now out of hospital, and feeling much better amongst family and friends, she tells Matt was Irish psychiatric care simply has to improve...