‘If it happened to her, it could happen to anyone’ — how death of much-loved homeless woman Ann Delaney has hit a nerve

9 comments

1. But has it hit the right nerves to do anything about homelessness? I doubt it there appears to be no political will to deal with the issue.

2. Seen her on Aungier St regularly enough, would have never thought she was only 47, very sad.

3. I was on the same page when I heard about Ann’s devastating passing. However the more I’ve read, I realise in this instance, it wasn’t the homelessness that was the issue. It was mental health. Which led me to have the opinion that it’s the mental health sector that is in crisis here in this particular case. (Not neglecting the housing crisis) Ann was a victim of unfortunate life hurdles, which she succumbed to a life of addiction and homelessness. She was offered beds however continuously denied the help. I met Ann a handful of times, she was a lady with dignity that had fallen victim to her mental health. May she have the best bed in heaven and be reunited with her daughter.

4. It’s so tragic. I know some of her family and they are devastated. They tried everything they could to help her. Ann sounded like she was a fantastic woman.
   Our mental health services and our own opinions and assumptions around it need a massive overhaul.

5. The issue at hand with Ann was dual diagnosis. Mental health and alcoholism. There are facilities to treat both individually but combine the two and options wither.

   Her mental health issues made treating her alcoholism impossible, and her alcoholism made treating her mental health issues impossible.

6. I get this id a sad topic and its a serious one but the title of this post makes it seem like theyre warning people that if she can die so can anyone else. Lol

7. She could have been sectioned to protect her against herself,

   I seen her regularly outside Tesco throwing ice cubes down on the path and with birds all over her, how she was allowed to continue that clear struggle is beyond me – the state don’t care, god knows what would have happened to her all them years living on the street.

   She’s not the only one out there like this, probably more noticeable because she’s a woman.

   Pity it took her death for people to take proper notice

8. Mental health services for addictions and psychiatric complaints,proper in patient facilities and proper laws to help people who are a danger to themselves and others would help greatly with our prison and addict populations. Some people have done very very badly since a lot of psychiatric facilities were closed down.

9. Homelessness is awful, and the government is definitely not doing anything right now to make it better.

   However… the vast, vast majority of homeless people are able to and do usually access emergency accommodation or hostels, maybe not every night but at least a lot of the time.

   On the other hand, the vast, vast majority of those who sleep rough almost all the time do so because they refuse to engage with homeless services, hostels, and emergency accommodation. Many will say this is because the hostel environment is unsafe. Well, if you have actually talked to rough sleepers you would know that that is very unsafe as well, people get assaulted and in not a small number of cases are harassed by Gardaí too.

   The vast majority of those people who refuse to engage with services have mental illness. Actually, nearly all of them are paranoid schizophrenics. There’s a limit to what social and mental health services can do about this. We don’t live in a society where you can just be sectioned and put into hospital just because you’re sleeping on the streets, so long as you’re not a risk to other people… and I don’t think many people realise the ethical quandary it would be to allow that.

   Not generally defending our mental health services, but posting because a lot of people are trying to say that they failed here. It just isn’t anybody’s jurisdiction to force people to get better. Also, a lot of people seem to be in denial that she had addiction issues. If you knew her at all she was clearly an alcoholic.

   [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/irish-journal-of-psychological-medicine/article/survey-of-mental-disorder-in-the-longterm-rough-sleeping-homeless-population-of-inner-dublin/7B6C5F2E1DADCA2FC8596B6FDB0CFE7A](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/irish-journal-of-psychological-medicine/article/survey-of-mental-disorder-in-the-longterm-rough-sleeping-homeless-population-of-inner-dublin/7B6C5F2E1DADCA2FC8596B6FDB0CFE7A)

   RIP Ann.