Latest news with #Killiney
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Remodelled detached Killiney home for €2.35m with teenager-friendly garden and a home cinema
Address : The Laurels, Cenacle Grove, Killiney, Co Dublin Price : €2,350,000 Agent : Sherry FitzGerald View this property on Set in the seclusion of Cenacle Grove off Killiney Hill Road lies the Laurels, a spacious five-bedroom home among seven other detached properties, hidden away from sight. Said to take its name from the Cenacle sisters, a French order of nuns who once occupied the stately Kilmarnock House which occupies the site behind, the property was last on the market in 2020 and appears on the Property Price Register as having sold that year for the sum of €1.5 million. Though having had new wiring and new windows fitted back then, the current owners have given the home a makeover, while also adding insulation and 22 solar panels, so it now has an improved Ber of B1. They also re-rendered the exterior to give the property a more polished finish, and you would never think that this now turnkey property was once a 1980s redbrick bungalow. The owners say they fell for its location – just a five-minute walk for a swim at Killiney's blue-flag beach and a five-minute drive to the N11 and the M50 – the space inside, as it extends to a considerable 302sq m (3,250sq ft), and the grounds, as they occupy 0.6 of an acre. Having links with the United States, the owners wanted an American feel to their home and to take advantage of having a southerly aspect. To do this, they widened doorways, so rooms now flow into one another, and added skylights to bounce light through the interiors. 'We partnered with Abbington Design [who updated the kitchen, all joinery and stripped and refinished the solid oak flooring throughout] and they gave the house a 'heavy facelift' as we knew it had the potential to become an outstanding home with plenty of space and light,' says the owner. READ MORE Hall Kitchen Dining area Drawingroom Livingroom Now, the home is designed to accommodate a large family where both children and parents have plenty of space to live and entertain. When the house was being remodelled, they also converted the garage to accommodate an en suite bedroom, though they say this space 'has been taken over by the kids, who use is for darts, Xboxes and as a hybrid gym'. A large hallway sets the scene of what lies inside, leading to an open-plan contemporary kitchen, dining and family space. Describing this space as 'greedy for light,' the owners say its energy changes through the day from being brightly lit in the mornings to 'a soft rosy light during the evenings'. With hand-painted units, the kitchen has Miele and Fisher & Paykel appliances, with further storage in a utility room, which itself has a high-end fitout with quartz countertops. To the rear of the house lies a family room – also used as a home cinema as it has a projector screen – with a walnut fitted bar and entertainment unit. It has two large picture windows and large sliding doors giving both light and access to the gardens. The property has five double bedrooms Outside seating area Lawn Outside dining area Raised patio with sunken fire pit Gardens extend to 0.6 of an acre Aerial view A more intimate formal drawingroom lies to the left of the hallway, and here Abbington Design created fitted units with interesting bronze inlay and handles. It has five bedrooms, all of which are good sized doubles. Two have en suites, while the principal has a walk-in wardrobe. The gardens here certainly add to the house. Along with their size on over half an acre, they have been meticulously laid out by Vyvian White of Lotus Landscape Design in conjunction with Evergreen Landscapes. They were designed in pockets to accommodate family needs. For dining, there's a barbecue area to the side with a large pergola for cover. This leads to a large patio with seating for 12, while a raised patio – adjacent to a basketball hoop – has a sunken firepit and large lawn, and was constructed with teenagers in mind. Besides the design for specific uses, the brief to landscapers was to have year-round interest and colour: 'It is really only in December that it feels it's at rest.' There is also a garden room hidden away at the end of the lawn, which works well as a home office. Owners love the light, bright welcoming spaces of their home, describing it as 'a phenomenal space to entertain but also restful and calm'. Having spent the past five years in Ireland – where they had planned to live long term at the Laurels – they are returning to the US for work reasons and have placed their turnkey home on the market through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €2.35 million. The furniture, much of which was designed for the house and imported from the US, is available by further negotiation.
BreakingNews.ie
19-06-2025
- BreakingNews.ie
Drug use, defecation, and sexual assault: 4,300 messages sent to Irish Rail text line
Irish Rail received nearly 4,300 messages to its dedicated text line for reporting antisocial behaviour on train services last year, with passengers complaining about drug use, violence, sexual assault, and indecent exposure. The shocking incidents that were reported in 2024 include a man defecating in the middle of a carriage, a fist fight involving a man and a woman, a passenger brandishing a sword, and a child being sexually assaulted. Advertisement The appalling insight into criminal and antisocial behaviour on the country's rail network has prompted a government TD to call for a dedicated public transport unit of An Garda Síochána. Records released under freedom of information laws suggest that drugs are regularly being openly abused on train services, with children even observed smoking cannabis on the Dart in January of last year. In February, one commuter texted Irish Rail to report a couple openly using cocaine on a train service with their baby in a pram in front of them, while a man on a train near Killiney last May was reported to have removed his trousers while smoking cannabis. Alcohol consumption was also a recurring problem. On February 29th, a 'violent, aggressive drunk man' was removed from a train at Clara, after which distressed passengers watched him 'vomiting and trying to fight'. Advertisement In July, a passenger contacted Irish Rail to report that a 75-year-old man had exposed himself to a young girl on an afternoon train service. She was 'visibly upset', they added. Similarly, a man on a train heading for Sydney Parade in Dublin last June was reported for 'exposing his d**k', and a man on a train at Booterstown was 'exposing his bare arse to young girls' in January. In May, passengers on a train at Howth Junction were shocked when a rock was thrown through the window, while one commuter reported that a group of 'young lads' had been travelling on the outside of the train before jumping off at Lansdowne Road. A man was reported to have defecated on a train in January and, in an unrelated incident, a passenger discovered 'an actual bag of faeces' in the middle of a carriage in September while travelling to Bray. Advertisement There were a number of complaints about couples engaging in 'sexually explicit acts' on trains. On October 11th, an individual reported that two fellow passengers were 'openly fingering each other and making out'. In late July, a passenger reported that a man and woman were punching each other on board a train, noting that 'she had him in a headlock at one point'. The woman subsequently disembarked at Sandymount. There were several complaints about the presence of blood on walls, windows and seats on carriages, as well as 'puddles' of vomit on floors, and 'dog poo' on some of the seats. In August, a troubling text message reported that a child had been sexually assaulted by a group of adolescents on a train early in the evening. The child disembarked at Bayside station, according to the report. Advertisement There were frequent instances of racist abuse on train services last year. In March, it was reported that two males were racially abusing 'a little boy' on a train, while a woman and her child were the targets of racist abuse near Connollly Station in September. In August, a passenger was made to feel very uncomfortable by a man who was walking up and down the train dressed as a clown. In March, a man boarded a train to Maynooth with a sword, according to two reports. On April 9th, a knife fight was reported on the Sligo-Dublin service around 11am, while a man 'slapped' a girl during a 'lovers' quarrel' on the Howth train near Connolly Station in January. A number of passengers who reported antisocial or criminal behaviour to Irish Rail via the text line said they had to get off the train for their own safety. Advertisement Fianna Fáil TD Cormac Devlin described the incidents described in the text messages as 'awful', and said there was a need to expedite plans for public transport policing contained in the Programme for Government. 'What's proposed at this stage is a standalone public transport service. My own preference would be that it would be a unit of An Garda Síochana,' he said. Ireland Housing target of 41,000 'not realistic', Minister... Read More 'This is why we definitely need to have more monitors, more proactive and visible deterrents on public transport – on carriages and platforms. Nobody wants to see these awful elements, particularly for youngsters. We need to ensure they are safe.' A spokesman for Irish Rail said antisocial behaviour was a societal issue to which train services were not immune, but added that there were a range of proactive and preventative measures in place to address it. 'The text line allows people to discreetly alert us to issues of concern, and is live monitored through our central security hub, who are in direct contact with our security teams on the network to coordinate response,' he explained. 'The vast majority of 50.1 million journeys on our network take place without incident, but we will continue to prioritise prevention of incidents, and rapid response working with our partners.'
Irish Times
08-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Hungry goats divide Killiney as firefighting grazers move in again
Fresh from the drama of the planning application near Bono's house , leafy Killiney's WhatsApp chats are ablaze again with a new debate: are goats really the best way to manage the local environment? Here's how it works: a herd of old Irish goats – formerly farmyard favourites but now surviving mostly as marauding gangs of escapees in the uplands – is brought to a patch of hill under supervision. They chomp away, and the vegetation-less area becomes a fire break. This is of immediate concern in Killiney where a 2022 gorse fire at Mullins Hill threatened houses and left two firefighters with injuries . But it's an increasingly popular tactic for councils and land managers. They have been deployed, or are about to be, at: Howth Head and Dalkey Quarry in Dublin; Ardmore in Waterford ; Achill Island ; the Burren in Co Clare; and at Coole Park in Co Sligo, eating shrubs whose ancestors were once admired by WB Yeats. Sounds like a good plan, then? Sort of. The goats are not picky eaters. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council's 2024 biodiversity report notes that on nearby Dalkey Island, all is low grass and 'no woody plants have become established, probably due to constant grazing by goats'. That's not an ideal outcome for the environmentally conscious. READ MORE Author and rewilded Eoghan Daltun says the idea is 'the height of ecological illiteracy'. 'The whole of Ireland was once covered in habitats like rainforests, bog, other types of forest – none of them would burn because they would all retain water and let it out slowly. The English ecologist Oliver Rackham once said that native woodlands burn like wet asbestos.' [ Emerald Isle no more: Why is nature eroding so fast? Opens in new window ] With the woods gone, the scrub does present a fire risk for a period, but letting the woods regrow is a better solution than introducing goats every year forever, he says. The council says the beasts are 'less destructive than frequent use of machinery, with a lower carbon footprint and more sensitive to wildlife' – but those are both degrowth strategies. 'Concreting over the whole place would achieve the same thing,' says Daltun. 'And it wouldn't be much worse for biodiversity.' Marcus Collier, assistant professor of botany at Trinity College Dublin, says the picture is more complicated. 'Much of the academic research points to 'grazing for biodiversity' initiatives as having positive outcomes in most cases as well as being novel 'nature-based solutions' for reducing fire intensity,' he said. 'Biodiversity loss is strongly linked to over- and under-grazing, so getting the balance right is tricky.' For Independent Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillor Hugh Lewis, the 2024 pilot in Killiney achieved its objectives 'whilst also having popular support', and is now an 'essential element of the wildfire management plan for the area'. 'This practice has been used successfully in Howth for many years,' he told Overheard. 'Its more recent effectiveness in Killiney can and should be emulated by other councils dealing with wildfire management across the country.' Zero back and sides it is for Ireland's hills then. An empty balloon Then US president Joe Biden with Corkman Micheál Martin in Carlingford in 2023 Fond memories abide in Mayo and Louth of the 2023 visit of former US president Joe Biden , who largely eschewed high-level diplomacy to focus on rattling around the homeplaces of his various ancestors making quips to smiling locals like any 80-year-old Irish American in the old country. He even made international news when he alleged that his distant cousin, the All Blacks-conquering rugby fullback Rob Kearney, 'beat the hell out of the Black and Tans' – again, fairly standard for an octogenarian Irish-American. He also referred to Micheál Martin as a 'proud son of Louth', among other inaccuracies. The Irish press pack was kept at a fair distance from Earth's most nuclear-armed man at the time, so it's interesting to read in CNN anchor Jake Tapper's book Original Sin of the US perspective on how the trip went. An energised Biden is described, giving his Ballina speech, visiting Knock and addressing the Houses of the Oireachtas. Then he encounters Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin where, true to form, duties went 'on and on'. 'When the high wore off … it was akin to witnessing all the air empty from a balloon,' Tapper writes. Democratic Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley noted that Biden needed his bed – his speech was 'breathless, soft, weak'. He reminded the Congressman of his father who had recently died of Parkinson's, an observation with which another congressman, Brian Higgins, whose own father had died with Alzheimer's, agreed. 'When people see that stuff, it conjures up a view that there's something going on neurologically,' he said. Biden, who often had more important things to do than visit Knock, would remain president for almost two more years and, for a period, was ramping up to run for another four. A strange clutch of associates Lee Harvey Oswald: a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus? Photograph: AP For those who can't make it to the Bloomsday exhibition in Tehran previously highlighted by Overheard , there's an option closer to home: James Joyce's Ulysses and the Assassination of JFK, a lecture by Prof Barry Keane of the University of Warsaw at Dublin's James Joyce Centre on the day itself. A bolder effort even than Stephen Dedalus's algebraic proof that Shakespeare is the ghost of his own father, the spiel is as follows: 'Considered will be the figure of Lee 'Leopold' Oswald, who, like a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, is out of sorts socially and professionally, nurses personal historical hurt and strong political views and is ill at ease in his domestic circumstances. What is more, Oswald boasts a strange clutch of associates and is given to flâneurial wanderings, turning up in the most unexpected of places.' It will be, the James Joyce Centre says, 'a demonstration that truth can be stranger than fiction'. Help wanted Photograph:Who runs Ireland? Nobody at the moment, with many of the State's most high profile jobs unoccupied. currently displays advertisements for chief executive officers at Fáilte Ireland (over the €6 billion tourist industry), Bus Éireann (over 100 million passenger journeys a year) and the National Concert Hall (over orchestras performing the Star Wars theme). That's on top of the other recruitment processes ongoing or ultimately necessary given the news in recent months. A new Garda commissioner is required , as is a head of the Arts Council after Maureen Kennelly was blocked from a full second term by Minister Patrick O'Donovan. Bernard Gloster has signalled his intention to step down from the HSE in March. The Housing Activation Office lacks a tsar, which it may or may not need according to the department's top civil servant, but is going to get anyway according to Jack Chambers. The FAI also lacks a chief football officer and a head of women's football after some premature departures. Children's Health Ireland is missing at least four board members. Talented administrators who yearn to explain themselves to backbench TDs on drizzly Thursday mornings at Leinster House: take your pick.
Irish Times
29-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Look inside: Superbly designed house and mews with unparalleled views over Killiney Bay for €7.25m
Houses on Killiney Hill Road in Killiney, Co Dublin, have some of the best sea views in the country – but some capture them better than others. When the owners of Palermo bought their two-storey-over-garden-level house on an acre of rolling lawn overlooking Killiney Bay in 2019, they began a complete renovation, led by architect Karen Brownlee and builder Sean Regan. Their aim of maximising sea views was achieved by building a balcony that spans the width of the house at the back, leading down via a wide spiral staircase to a terrace with two seating areas below it that open off garden-level rooms. Halfway down the rolling lawn, another terrace with built-in seating captures views of Bray Head and the Sugar Loaf across an expanse of sea glittering in bright May sunshine. Palermo is one of many Victorian houses in the area named after places in Italy – Padua and Montebello are farther down the road. It was built in 1848 by the Hone family, whose members included the artist Nathaniel Hone and WB Yeats's biographer Joseph Hone. Joseph lived here until the 1920s, and the letter H is etched into the metal weathervane on the roof of a separate mews house. The late antiques dealer Louis O'Sullivan and his wife, Finola, lived in Palermo for more than 40 years before putting the house up for sale in 2017 with a €4 million asking price. It was bought by the current owners in 2019 for €2.825 million, according to the Property Price Register. Entrance Entrance hall Hallway Drawingroom Kitchen Diningroom Family room Study Main bedroom Bathroom In the past six years they have undertaken substantial renovations on both the house and the mews, resulting in properties that mix period details with modern comforts – lots of storage, underfloor heating in the basement – and vivid contemporary decor. One of the bathrooms, for example, has graffiti-design shower tiles, and the kitchen has a beautiful green waterfall island unit. READ MORE The 595sq m (6,400sq ft) property, including the main house and the mews, is for sale for €7.25 million. The 429sq m (4,604sq ft) main house has a C2 Ber rating and is for sale by itself for €5.95 million. The A-rated 167sq m (1,796sq ft) three-bedroom mews, currently rented for €6,200 a month, may or may not be sold separately. The tenant will be vacating the mews shortly, the agent says. Why move after doing all that work? The couple came here from London with two children and now want to move closer to their children's secondary school. They also enjoy home renovation – it's his fourth or fifth, says one of the owners. The entrance to Palermo is roughly a third of the way down winding Killiney Hill from the Druid's Chair pub on the left, with a newly widened and recessed entrance that makes it easier to access. The front door opens at the side of the house into a tiled porch leading into a hall with a new engineered oak parquet floor and original ceiling cornicing. A Waterford Crystal chandelier – one of many in the house – hangs from the ceiling. A stained-glass window at the far end of the hall matches one in the landing above and a cosy study opens to the right, and next to it is a diningroom with striking forest-effect wallpaper, with a bar concealed in one wall. Both have original timber floors. Garden Sea views from garden Commanding views The main rooms, however, are the drawingroom and kitchen across the hall, both with commanding views of the sea. The large drawingroom has a deep bay window with three tall sash windows. Painted a soft grey/green, the room has a white marble fireplace, chandelier, ceiling cornicing and, most interestingly, partial wallpaper on two walls. The owners think this is hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper, with delicate trees on a yellow background, that may have been in Palermo even before the O'Sullivan family lived there. A door in the corner of the room opens into the streamlined Rhatigan & Hick kitchen/breakfastroom that barely looks like a kitchen: just about everything is concealed in floor-to-ceiling units with doors that fold back next to a large island. This has a sink, integrated dishwasher and seating, and a green waterfall quartzite top. Most importantly, two very tall bay sash windows and glazed double doors opening on to the balcony enjoy the same sea views as the drawingroom. A door opens from the kitchen back into the hall, at the very end of which is a downstairs toilet with vivid green jungle-like wallpaper. Mews house Mews livingroom Mews kitchen A staircase with a striking striped red, grey and orange carpet and a glass balustrade lead to the garden level. The rooms here are timber-floored and have underfloor heating: a large study at one end opens on to the terrace outside, as does the family room – which has a wood-burning stove – at the other end of the hall. There's a gym room in between that could be another bedroom. A bathroom next to the family room has a shower with jazzy black and green tiles. There's a wine cellar through an arch in the old brick coal cellar, and the large utility room has a Belfast sink and lots of storage cupboards. Upstairs, on the first floor, the main bedroom enjoys the same views as the kitchen and breakfastroom directly below it. A floor-to-ceiling built-in wardrobe curves around one corner of the room, which has a marble fireplace and a stained timber floor. Three tall sash windows with working shutters in a shallow bay are uncurtained (but have fitted blackout blinds): they have probably the best sea views in the house, from Bray Head to Howth. The en suite has a pink-tiled shower and a sink with a marble surround. There are three other double bedrooms at this level, three with en suites, all with built-in wardrobes. One is fitted as study, another has a ladder leading up to a hidden mezzanine, much loved by their son, says one of the owners. Its en suite has graffiti tiles from Design Emporium. Their daughter's room is dual-aspect, with one tall window looking out to sea; the timber floor is painted white, and a hammock-style swing hangs from the ceiling. A toilet off the landing has flamingo wallpaper; a family bathroom on the first floor return has a shower, oval bath and tiled floor. Outside, two gravelled terraces are sheltered beneath the main balcony: they look down over a rolling lawn with a magnolia tree at its centre near the sunken terrace, all sheltered by high hedges. A trampoline built into the lawn in this very family-friendly house will remain. Paths on both sides of the lawn lead around it; a gate near the bottom opens on to Strathmore Road, from where it's a reasonably short walk (past Bono's house) to Killiney beach and Killiney Dart station. The three/four-bedroom A-rated L-shaped mews is completely private, with high stone walls around a large courtyard. The livingroom is timber-floored, like all the rooms downstairs in this two-storey mews; the kitchen/diningroom has quartz-topped units, a peninsula with seating and double doors opening into the courtyard. A TV room has a wide arched window looking into the courtyard; a yellow spiral staircase leads to a bedroom upstairs. The main bedroom, over the livingroom, has a few steps down into a space with a wide picture window that offers a slice of Palermo's view of the sea. There are a number of other outbuildings beside the main house that could be converted by new owners.
Irish Times
11-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
‘Losing my husband, losing my mind': Author says she is living proof people can recover from severe mental illness
We meet in Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel in Killiney , south Co Dublin . It's near home for Mary Ann Kenny, and also near where her husband John collapsed one fine April day in 2015 while jogging, and died. His death left Kenny, a lecturer in German, and their two primary-school-aged boys stunned, grieving, their lives suddenly torn apart. Over the following months as they groped through life, Kenny's grief became intense, with depression and several physical and psychological symptoms, including delusions that her boys had taken her medication and been harmed. She lost touch with reality and developed psychosis, spending 10 weeks in a psychiatric hospital. It was a dark time. Ten years later, life is healthy and happy and she has written The Episode, a memoir about her personal experience of severe mental illness. It's remarkably detailed, drawing on her own memories and observations, and multiple medical and social-work files. There's a dizzying array of professionals, medications, treatments. Professionals and friends are anonymised, as is a day-care centre and psychiatric hospital. She steers an arresting course between an academic's rigorous research and pacy, insightful readability. Today there's no hint of what she's been through. 'I've been very good for a long time.' She's calm, analytical, articulate. READ MORE Many people go through grief, but hers was extreme, 'particularly cruel, I suppose'. Because it was sudden. Because she had two small children ('it's impossible to overstate the burden of that'). Because of her 'aloneness': John was an only child, her siblings lived abroad; she had very good friends but her main support came from her 90-year-old mother Bernie ('she's the hero'). Grief triggered a series of events, leading to psychosis. She talks about complex traumas: 'I lost control of everything ... I was obsessed with this belief that I had damaged my children, ruined my children's lives. It was one of the most traumatic things you could imagine. That there's no hope for them.' And then, 'what happened to me in hospital', where, she says, 'my identity was just torn to shreds'. Writing The Episode has helped her tease out the interplay of her feelings of guilt. The feeling that she hadn't protected the boys enough from life's cruelties somehow became an obsessional belief that she had damaged them, and led to psychosis. Over a few months everything spiralled and she went from attending a day centre to being admitted twice to a psychiatric hospital. She vividly portrays what it's like on the other side of constant questions, over and over, from multiple healthcare professionals. She'd like professionals 'to see what it feels like at the receiving end', she says. Mary Ann Kenny: 'I felt annihilated by my treatment, annihilated as a person.' Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill After intense assessments, she went on to tell professionals in October 2015 that she wanted to harm her own children, and herself. It's shocking to read. She writes: 'Why did I do it? Why did I say such appalling things – none of which was true and none of which I believed, even at the time, and all of which were guaranteed to make my situation so much worse? Because I thought I was living in a parallel realm and believed that what I was saying didn't matter in the real world inhabited by everyone else? 'Because I was close to collapse, having barely eaten during the preceding weeks, because of the effects of the antipsychotic medication on my prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for executive functions? 'Because it seemed to me that the professionals with their faces of mistrust and frustration believed that I was guilty of something , and I myself thought I was guilty too? Because I had been asked the same questions over and over for two months and I couldn't fight them off any more? Because I wanted to be agreeable and to give the medical staff what they seemed to be looking for?' But having said what she said, 'my fate was sealed', she observes now. There has to be a better way of treating somebody in such distress. I felt annihilated by my treatment, annihilated as a person — Mary Ann Kenny The reader feels the frustration of the constant interrogation, but feels pity for the professionals too. Kenny knows this. She says 'the worst of the lies, the self-incriminating details, I blurted out in the first 10 days. Then I stopped. I started to come to my senses. It's incredible how quickly I actually regained my sanity after that, started to realise the delusional belief was wrong.' [ How I coped when grief became my new reality Opens in new window ] She realised, too, 'the seriousness of what I'd said'. Kenny acknowledges what the professionals must have feared, when she said she planned to harm her children and herself. 'I never did have those plans and intentions ... There's nothing more tragic than those cases, of a parent doing something to their children because they are mentally ill, maybe in ways not dissimilar to me." However, she says: 'I felt annihilated by my treatment, annihilated as a person, as a human being, as a mother, as a daughter, as a friend. I felt literally torn apart.' Psychotherapy later, privately, helped her process the trauma of 'losing my husband, losing my mind … Mostly I needed therapy to help me come to terms with my hospital experience'. Mary Ann Kenny exposed her inner turmoil and psychiatric illness, for reasons that were 'bigger than any need for privacy'. Photograph: iStock She observes, from reading about psychiatry as well her own experience of it, 'they treat symptoms. But they don't ask about the cause.' Our psychiatric system, she says, is 'all about risk assessment and risk prevention, for the severely mentally ill anyway, rather than care or therapeutic intervention for patients' sake.' [ Huge variations between hospitals in treatment of mental health emergencies Opens in new window ] She felt disempowered, she says. 'I thought I was going to die in there. I thought my children were going to be taken away from me. There has to be a better way. This was a person in distress, suffering, who led a completely normal life up to the day her husband died. Something has happened to her, and we have to help her.' She felt 'cast out. I felt a complete social failure. That is incredibly traumatic.' It was eight months out of her life. She sometimes thinks of it as 'having to break down in order to get the help I needed'. But it was an episode. It ended. 'And it never came back.' Ten years later, she's still working. Her sons are in secondary school. 'They're absolutely wonderful. We're a very, very happy, close unit, the three of us.' The weird thing is, after the episode ... I have never looked back. I've never had a day's depression since — Mary Ann Kenny 'Maybe the drugs worked. Who am I to say they didn't work?' Key was her delusions waning. 'I stopped believing I had harmed my children.' In her experience: 'Antipsychotics, they dull your cognitive activity, as well as your emotional feelings.' With a self-destructive, delusional belief, 'maybe that's exactly what you need. If you become like a zombie, which I did, maybe that's, in the first instance, beneficial.' Or 'perhaps it was the passage of time', and removal from daily life. [ Adam Loughnane asked for help at a Galway hospital. Three hours later he was dead Opens in new window ] 'All I know is, I was no longer obsessing about this one thing,' and instead started to worry about 'real-world worries. Maybe I just had no space left to worry about the imaginary thing ... And then I was better. It's extraordinary. How could you get so ill and then you get better?' Her experience puts in context how anyone can be vulnerable. Bad things happen; perhaps any person's life and mind could fall apart. But also, that people can recover from severe mental illness. 'I'm the living proof.' 'The weird thing is, after the episode ... I have never looked back. I've never had a day's depression since. I have never been crippled by grief again. There's a poignant, melancholic sadness about John ... I experienced an extreme collapse of my entire life. So when I got my life back, I was overcome with joy.' Ultimately, 'the whole experience made me stronger'. The first draft of what was to become her book took three years, writing for herself, to make sense of it all. She felt she'd gained insights into the psychology of her breakdown worth sharing. 'I think other people can learn from it. I didn't set out to bash the professionals, and I don't think I did.' [ Mental health in Ireland: 'Should we not be helping people before they get down to the breakdown stage?' Opens in new window ] She has exposed her inner turmoil and psychiatric illness, for reasons that were 'bigger than any need for privacy'. Reading her own records, she felt 'that's not my story. My personal truth about what happened to me is different from those files. And I want to put my story on the record.' The Episode, A True Story of Loss, Madness and Healing, by Mary Ann Kenny is published by Sandycove, an imprint of Penguin Random House
