Teen girl in care of HSE to continue anti-psychotic medication despite her mother’s objection

A 16-year-old girl being treated in a Health Service Executive adolescent psychiatric unit is to continue on anti-psychotic medication despite her mother's objection to the use of the drug.

Mr Justice George Birmingham made orders yesterday allowing the girl's treatment to continue and the HSE to have access to her school records. He will review the matter in June.

In High Court proceedings, the girl’s mother said she had researched anti-psychotic drugs and was very concerned by medical evidence showing side-effects could include dyskinesia, a disorder of the nervous system. She claimed the particular drug was not licensed in Ireland for use in children or adolescents.

She said her daughter became ill after being bullied at school and she had also told nurses she was kidnapped by her father when nine months old. This incident had happened, her mother said.

Recovery
Her daughter was "a determined and strong little girl". As a mother, she believed her daughter would recover given two months without anti-psychotic drugs and treatment with psycho-social therapies.

The girl went into voluntary care in January this year following a psychotic episode. After her mother raised concerns about her treatment with anti-psychotic drugs, the HSE obtained a District Court order to detain the girl.

Neither the girl’s court-appointed guardian ad litem nor her father objected to her treatment. Her father’s counsel, Mark Costello, said his client rejected suggestions he kidnapped his daughter.

Witness for the girl’s mother, Dr Bill Johnson, former consultant psychiatrist at Pankhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, said he believed the girl was suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder rooted in the kidnapping incident and triggered by moving to a new school and being bullied.

Illness
There was a view psychosis was an illness "like diabetes" and could be treated with anti-psychotic drugs but he did not believe it was a biochemical disorder. Anti-psychotic drugs caused brain damage, he said.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Michelle Harley, who is treating the girl, said that when she was first admitted, the girl was extremely unwell with paranoid delusions and disinhibited behaviour.

She gave her two other anti-psychotic drugs before putting her on the current drug, zuclopenthixol, and there had been some improvements, Dr Harley said.

She acknowledged there were side-effects, but said these were more common with long-term use and in most cases were reversible.

Mr Justice Birmingham said he would make an order continuing treatment to see what progress was made but would not finalise the matter and would consider further legal issues in June.

The ex-parte procedure used by the HSE to obtain the initial order, with “no opportunity” for the girl’s mother to be heard, was “a very frail procedure”, “putting it at its mildest”, the judge added.