Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Covid has visited significant pressures on mental health services. For all of us, isolation and restrictions have been a considerable challenge, but for those battling their way through life, it has been nothing short of a nightmare. In August, I first spoke in the House about the following young constituent. His family desperately wanted to get him out of seclusion, but at the time, St. Loman's Hospital in Mullingar was not in a position to manage that process. Months passed and this man spent 110 days in isolation, more than half the time he has spent in the care of mental health services since he was admitted in July. His family have fought desperately for help, and at a family conference with his medical team in November, it was agreed that two care centres would be approached in the hope they could provide the intensive rehabilitative care that this young man realises is necessary if he is to return to the community. He himself craved the move and wrote to the Minister of State to ask that the process be sped up. On behalf of the family, I acknowledge her support and that of her staff for the family and for their fears and concerns.

Christmas for this young man and his family was a nightmare. On one side of a window in St. Loman's Hospital, his mother desperately hoped she would never see another Christmas like it. As the days turned into weeks and months, the young man grew ever more frustrated and, unfortunately, last Friday he lashed out at a fellow patient and was returned to isolation. Needless to say, his family are crestfallen, fearing that the prospect of a possible recovery has been all but quashed. The promise of that intensive rehab lies in the balance, as is the promise of a life and of a future. Thankfully, he was released from isolation last night but he is heavily sedated and medicated.

This is just one young man caught on the mental health treadmill, a seemingly never-ending cycle of uncertainty and bleakness that, unfortunately, has been fuelled by Covid. For this young man and his family, I plead with the HSE to get him the care he so desperately needs. I ask it not to leave him to languish within the walls of the system and not to turn out the lights on this young life, and to deliver him the intensive rehabilitative care he so desperately needs.

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