Over 20,000 hours spent in solitary confinement by patient in new Central Mental Hospital

RTÉ Investigates documentary reveals a patient spent over 20,000 hours in solitary confinement in the new Central Mental Hospital.

The documentary reveals 50 beds at the hospital have remained unused for more than three years after the hospital opened.

The second part of the documentary, which will air tonight on RTÉ, shows how in 2024 there were 82 seclusion incidents in Portrane compared to 69 the previous year.

The family of a brain-damaged man who was locked up for years in a small hospital seclusion room has spoken to RTÉ Investigates about his plight and the lack of services for people with these conditions.

Jacinta Loughnane’s son, Stephen, has spent tens of thousands of hours continually locked up in seclusion as there are no residential settings able to take him. Stephen, from Roscrea, was the surviving passenger of a fatal road crash when he was 16.

He suffered a brain injury that resulted in psychiatric symptoms like psychosis, hallucinations and violent outbursts.

Stephen is currently detained at the Central Mental Hospital, Portrane, and only in recent months was moved to a bigger isolation unit on a temporary basis after spending years on his own in a small room stripped of any furniture or effects.

Ms Loughnane told RTÉ Investigates about the conditions under which her son has been kept.

“No one deserves to be locked in a room like that. It’s like going to visit Hannibal Lecter in the movie The Silence of the Lambs. He is behind a screen with the glass and talking through a speaker. You know, that's the only way I can describe it. And absolutely nothing in the room.

“And it plays on my mind, thinking about him, all the minutes of every day, walking around in that room with nothing only the four walls to look at. And it's coming up to nearly five years he's there now, 24 hours of the day, every day for last five years nearly.

“It's heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking to think of him like it. Being left there like that. Absolutely dreadful,” she said.