Chapter 5: Anti-psychotic Drugs

JJ Muggivan

When Tony first got me involved in the story of Brendan O’Donnell, I intended to write a very basic account of his life and attempt to find out what had brought him to do what he did. I started with some assumptions that problems of the kind Brendan had arise somehow within the family and spiral out of control. However, as Tony and I gathered

more information throughout the years, I came to believe that the story was far more complex.

When I first met Brendan, I did not know a lot about his psychological problems. In later years, I read the impressions of him given by Dr Gerry O’Neill during the trial. In my opinion, the Brendan O’Donnell I knew bears close resemblance to the Brendan O’Donnell described by Dr O’Neill.

Dr O’Neill, a visiting consultant at Trinity House, examined Brendan when he had been there a few weeks. In all, Dr O’Neill saw him seven times, more than he had ever seen any other boy there. The meetings took place between 1988 and 1990. At the first meeting, he found a gentle, quiet, withdrawn boy who had been bullied and who had difficulties coping with the Dublin boys. The staff at Trinity House had taken steps to deal with the bullying and the situation had improved.

Dr O’Neill found Brendan open and direct and easy to talk to. He admitted his difficulties at school and how hard he found the work. His schoolmates nicknamed him ‘Hitman’ because of his obvious interest in guns. This had started when he went clay-pigeon shooting with his uncle in England and had got to the point that he seemed to know every house in his area that had a gun. The early loss of his mother, with whom he had an over-close relationship, appeared to have worsened his problems. Although he said at first that he was pleased that his father had re-married, he later asserted vehemently that he felt pushed aside when his stepmother came into the family and that his father took little notice of him.

Given three wishes, Brendan said that his were that his mother had not died, that he could go home again and that he would not use the shotgun again. He said that the three people closest to him were his dead mother, his youngest brother, Aidan, and his sister, Ann Marie. She had been like a second mother to him; on one occasion she had persuaded him to hand over a gun to the guards following an incident when he had fired a gun at a door that a guard had walked through.

Dr O’Neill formed the view that Brendan was losing touch with reality and was potentially psychotic. A second psychiatric opinion endorsed this view. He believed that Brendan presented

an element of danger to society and appeared to have no scruples about killing or shooting people for revenge, especially if it were against other Trinity House prisoners or for the IRA. Brendan

seemed to be under the delusion that he was involved with the IRA, that the IRA were trying to rescue him from Trinity House and were sending him coded messages through the radio, calling him Rambo.

Dr O’Neill’s recommendation was that Brendan should be kept in a secure setting for some time, and treated by adult psychiatric services. Brendan would have to agree to this, however, and he was not enthusiastic about moving to a small residential community under adult care. It was Dr O’Neill’s opinion that a good environment, not medication, was more likely to provide a solution to Brendan’s problems. However, he was not accepted for a place at a suitable facility in Galway, which is how he ended up in Trinity House. He transferred briefly to a smaller institution in Clonmel, but he escaped from there and was returned to Trinity House.

Brendan’s father stated to a news reporter on one occasion that he felt as if he had been bringing Brendan to psychiatrists all of his life. To some extent, this is true. Michael Pat O’Donnell’s son might not have been helped but the trips to doctors and to institutions left the kind of a record we rarely get on individuals like Brendan.

Thus, Brendan’s story requires an examination of his family life experience, but also his experience of mental-health care. The record is full of information that he was injured by both his family life experience and the health care he received. As I play my part in the telling of his story, I am guided by information gathered from both of these life experiences.

Because of what I discovered in the course of my work, I have changed my mind many times about Brendan’s worsening mental-health problems and how they brought him to act as he did.

I have often asked Tony what kind of teenager arrived in his home on 16 February 1989. His contribution to this account is his answer. Working backwards, and after I had obtained large quantities of information, I asked what kind of mental-health care Brendan was receiving when he ran away from Trinity House and before he arrived at my brother’s house.

Prior to running away from Trinity House, Brendan had, in fact, been on heavy anti-psychotic medication. In June 1988, Dr O’Neill had judged him to be psychotic and a certain danger to society. Apparently at that time, Brendan was suffering delusions about involvement with the IRA, who he believed were trying to rescue him from the detention centre. He told Dr O’Neill that the IRA called him ‘Rambo’ and sent him coded messages through the radio. Brendan was also seen by Dr Charles Smith who, like Dr O’Neill, suspected psychosis. Anti-psychotic treatment was prescribed for the then fourteen-year-old boy, and when the delusions appeared to fade, the doctors believed their diagnosis to have been correct, and Brendan continued on the treatment.

There is evidence that some anti-psychotic drugs can actually create a dependence which is, in itself, a disease, the symptoms of which would include a huge indifference, fever, sweating and heart problems. According to Dr Peter Breggin, author of Toxic Psychiatry, in severe cases, these can result in ‘delirium, coma, and death’. Moreover, patients who apparently make a complete recovery might, years later, become unexpectedly ill again. Dr Breggin writes:

The profession of psychiatry now agrees that the drug-induced neurological disorders do become permanent in a large percentage of patients. In addition, there is growing incontrovertible

evidence that permanent psychosis and dementia also are frequent outcomes....

When children are given anti-psychotic drugs, there is a danger that after several months of treatment, they will become very anxious, thus requiring larger doses of the medication. And any patients attempting to come off the medication would require support from trained professionals.

It is possible that when Brendan did not return to Trinity House, and did not receive any medication or treatment at either Ballinasloe or Galway, he was, in fact, suffering sudden withdrawal. This might have had the effect of worsening the original psychotic symptoms and causing him anxiety and anguish.

Brendan’s record calls for an examination of how, when, and why his symptoms developed.