Galway to hold rally for Adam's Protocols following young man's death – ‘We believed that his passing wouldn't be in vain'
Back in February, Alan presented himself to the A&E at University Hospital Galway (UHG) in a distressed state, but later that day he left the hospital and took his own life.
Since then, Joe Loughnane has been campaigning for hospitals to have a separate emergency department for mental health patients – an initiative called Alan's Protocol in memory of his late brother.
However, recently the regional executive officer for HSE West and Northwest Tony Canavan said the protocol will not be implemented.
But Joe has no intention of giving up and has organised a rally for Saturday, June 7. The event will start in Eyre Square at 2pm and the crowd will either proceed to the Spanish Arch or to UHG.
Joe explained to the Irish Independent: 'Depending on the turnout and the weather, we'll march either the Spanish Arch, if it's a large turnout, but if it's a smaller turnout we're going to march to University Hospital Galway, where there will be contributions from people who bereaved by suicide, doctors and mental health staff themselves.'
Joe explained this initial decision from the HSE has left him upset and disappointed as he had been contacting the HSE, TDs and politicians with his and other people's experiences as well as opinions from experts and charities.
'It was very upsetting. Sadly in this country it takes somebody to die before the government realise they have to do something, especially with healthcare issues.
'We believed that Adam's passing wouldn't be in vain, that the government would have realised 'okay we need to do something here', but they seems to just be giving us the same responses.
'And then on Friday Tony Canavan said, 'no, we still want people to go through the emergency department'.
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'To me, as somebody recently bereaved by suicide, what they are basically saying is that they want to continue this process of funnelling everybody through the emergency department, no matter what type of crisis they're in, a physical health crisis or a mental health crisis, in the full knowledge of the fact that those in a physical health crisis are going to get priority over those in a mental health crisis.'
Joe explained the HSE does not want to leave the emergency department without consultant psychiatrists. However, he added this is not what Adam's Protocols is about.
'We understand there will be people who self-harmed, obviously someone like that needs to go through the emergency department, because they get the proper healthcare there. But my brother was in perfect physical health, he should have been sent to a mental health A&E.
'Obviously that is going to require extra staffing, but the money is there, and it's literally a measure that will save lives.
'What we realised in the past weeks, months, since Adam's passed, had he just been taken into a room, sat down, given a cup of tea, and someone chat to him, and close and lock the door, he would have been fine and he would have been here today. We know that for a fact.
'Because he was in that busy, overcrowded A&E room of university hospital Galway on a Tuesday afternoon where he was looking around, feeling like a burden, everyone else surrounding him was getting the care and he wasn't, that's why he walked out.'
Unfortunately, Adam's story is not an isolated case as over the past three months Joe has been inundated with stories from all over the country.
'I had to stop reading some of them because it's actually quite triggering and traumatic to read some of the stories. They're coming through every day, comments on Instagram and Facebook, people private message me, people email me, it seems to be something that has been babbling up and has been bothering people for decades now.
'A lot of the families are people who lost their loved one 15 years ago, but it was in similar situations, where they've gone to an A&E, but they were dismissed and told to go home and given medication, and sadly that person then ended their life.
'This story seems to be very common. But it's just not talked about. I think a lot of families, because of the stigma around suicide, maybe they didn't feel comfortable talking about it. But I feel like I contributed to break that stigma when I spoke openly about Alan passing three months ago.'
He added: 'I know that's happened again sadly to people since Alan passed. That's why we want to make sure this takes place and it changes things.'
Talking about actions to make sure that this does not happen again, Joe said that anybody who comes to the hospital in a mental health crisis 'should be given the same care regardless of whether they have health insurance or not, regardless of how much money they have'.
Also, immediate checks are required: 'Adam had been an inpatient of University Hospital Galway, so when he presented himself on that day, that should have been checked immediately. And they should have secured him and monitored him. That lack of monitoring, that's replicated hundreds of stories that I have been sent over the last couple of months across the country.
He added he is not asking for 'a pie in the sky' and is confident Adam's Protocols could be implemented soon if the HSE and the Government agreed to it.
'This is not something radical, it has been called before. Back in 2020 in Limerick a motion was passed calling for a separate emergency department for mental health patients. And it was passed unanimously.
'In the UK in the last couple of years they started to roll out a 24/7 mental health A&E, they call them urgent care centres, but they don't require any referral, they are for anybody who walks in and it's a completely different environment than an emergency department, within the same hospital. And these are NHS, publicly funded.
'For me it's about presenting examples like that to the government, opposition parties, or whoever, to make them realise this is not a pie in the sky, this is something that has been done in the county right beside us and it can be done here easily too.
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