IRELAND
Irish Times
Carl O’Brien
Mon, Jun 16, 2014
At the age of 19, Hanna Greally was admitted to St Loman’s Psychiatric Hospital in Mullingar. It was the mid-1940s and she had just returned home from London, where she had witnessed the horrors of the blitz.
She thought she was being admitted to the hospital for “a rest”.
Despite several escape attempts and pleading letters to relatives to sign her out, she remained there for the best part of 20 years.
St Ita’s psychiatric hospital in Portrane, north DublinCall to extend mother and baby homes inquiry to mental homes
Bird’s Nest Soup, her book published in the 1970s, captured in haunting detail the lives of others stripped of their human rights – social outcasts, the unloved, the incurably embittered and the dispirited.
“The patients inside, expectant, waited for the letters and the visits, until finally, one day, they would find themselves rejects, outcasts, and no explanation given. Sometimes a crushed spirit breaks, from mental agony and anguish, when she understands at last she is captive in a free society.”
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