Woman loses schizophrenia misdiagnosis claim

A 46-year-old woman’s damages action over allegedly having been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, after she complained of being sexually abused by a sibling, has been dismissed.

High Court President Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns found that the claim by the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is statute-barred.

She claimed she spent 11 years in a 13-year span effectively locked up at a Dublin psychiatric hospital following an alleged misdiagnosis by a doctor attached to the facility. The woman was first admitted in the early 1980s, when she was in her mid-teens.

Mr Justice Kearns heard that while she was an in-patient at the facility, she claimed to have been sexually abused by a male trainee nurse and a religious brother she had grown to trust. That abuse was the subject of separate legal proceedings.

In the 1990s, the woman had come under the care of another doctor who told her she did not suffer from any mental illness. Arising out of the alleged misdiagnosis, she brought a negligence claim, seeking damages, against the hospital and the doctor.

The claims were denied and, in a pre-trial motion, the defendants argued her claim should be struck out because it was statute-barred. She had first known about the alleged misdiagnosis in the late 1990s, a solicitor instructed in 2002, but had not initiated her claim until 2009 — which the defendants said was outside the statutory-allowed time period of three years.

Mr Justice Kearns, in a written judgment, said that with great regret he was dismissing the woman’s case after finding it was statute-barred.

He said she was an honest and entirely reliable witness and had shown herself to be a remarkably resilient individual.

In her evidence, the woman claimed that from a young age she had been sexually abused on a continuous basis by an older brother. Judge Kearns said that, in her mid-teens, she reported the abuse to a neighbour but had not been believed. As a result, she attempted to take her own life and had been admitted to hospital.

She had eventually been taken to the psychiatric hospital where she met with the doctor who, she alleged, misdiagnosed her condition. 

This article is courtesy of the Irish Examiner.