Toni’s (not his real name) desperation has pushed him to denounce both the Consell de Ibiza and the center for minors with behavioral and mental health problems where his son, who has just turned 16 has made several suicide attempts. The last and most serious, which occurred in the middle of last month, left him in a coma for three days and a week of observation in the Intensive Care Unit.
While the minor was recovering in the child psychiatric hospitalization unit of the Hospital la Fe in Valencia, the father received the news that his son was going to return to the same center for minors where, despite being under the suicide prevention protocol, he managed to force the door of the pharmacy and ingest all the medication he could find.
“There was supposed to be a monitor watching him to prevent this from happening. The center also does not apply psychotherapy to find the root of my son’s problem, because the psychiatrist sees him 15 minutes a week and there they only teach DIY or cooking workshops, which would be very good as a complement”, he warns.
Consell de Ibiza defends adequacy of services for minors
His son, due to his self-destructive tendencies, is now under the guardianship of the Consell, which referred the minor to a private institution in Valencia. The father insists that this center does not meet the conditions of care and safety to take care of the child, especially after the last suicide attempt. For its part, the Consell de Ibiza indicates that the technical reports support that the service is adequate for this case and that, being a minor, can not provide more details.
The drama for Toni began at the beginning of last year. His son, for whom he had sole custody, was still 14 years old. As he explains, he had so far shown a tendency for melancholy and a great fondness for computers and robotics, in a self-taught way. “He has an IQ above 120,” he details, making him a person of well above average intelligence. “But he started hanging out with very bad company,” he laments.
First escapades
The young boy suffered a couple of drunken comas, in which he was picked up off the street unconscious by ambulances. At Easter, the father later learned, he got hold of a box of Rivotril, a benzodiazepine, like Valium, with sedative and anxiolytic properties resulting in his son “mixing a bomb with alcohol,”.
That day he had not returned home and, after reporting the case to the police, showed up the next morning. “He came home completely high from those pills and jumped from the second floor, four meters high, to escape.” He was found hours later in the street, sleeping and in a terrible condition.
“He ran away every week at 11 o’clock at night and returned at 12 noon the next day, with a terrible high and I was desperate every night looking for him”
The situation worsened in summer, when his father had to dedicate more hours to his job in a hotel. “He already ran away every week at 11 pm and came back at 12 noon the next day, with a terrible high, and I was desperate every night looking for him,” he says in anguish.
It was then that the son began to confess that he did not like this world and wanted to die. He suffered several intoxications by ingesting pills that he took from the family medicine cabinet. He was also admitted to the child psychiatry unit of the Son Espases Hospital in Palma.
In search of help
Desperate and “without the tools to manage it”, Toni went to ask for help from the Consell de Ibiza, which has the responsibility for Minors. On October 20th he was admitted to the Consell de Ibiza’s Illa de Bes center for minors, a procedure for which the father explains that he had to cede guardianship of his son voluntarily and temporarily.
“The first 15 days he was fine,” he recalls, but then the young man fell into a routine. “When he starts to get bored, problems arise.” He would run away and be found drunk, cut his wrists with the glass of a window he broke and was admitted again to Son Espases. At Christmas, the father took his son on vacation to Port Aventura and his behavior improved. “He was very happy, but after returning to the center, he sank again after 15 days”.
“He had the suicide prevention protocol activated and they kept an eye on him, but there was an oversight”
“He had the suicide prevention protocol activated and they kept an eye on him, but there was an oversight”, he explains. The young man asked another inmate for a belt, hid in a room and hung himself. “Thank God the belt broke,” although he had been knocked unconscious and fell face first to the floor. “
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.