Sinead O'Connor's son Shane, dead by suicide at 17

As it played out on Twitter...

[quote]This is a message for my son, Shane. Shane, it’s not funny any more all this going missing. You are scaring the crap out of me. Could you please do the right thing and present yourself at a Gardai station. If you are with Shane please call the Gardai for his safety.

[quote]Shane, your life is precious. God didn’t chisel that beautiful smile on your beautiful face for nothing. My world would collapse without you. You are my heart. Please don’t stop it from beating. Please don’t harm yourself. Go to the Gardai and let’s get you to hospital.

[quote]I want to know why Lynn Ward at Taillight hospital who were supposed to have HCA’s supervise my child 24/7 have managed to let him out of their grasp this morning when 7 days ago he made two severe suicide attempts.

[quote]Like, how has a seventeen year old traumatised young person WHO WAS ON SUICIDE WATCH in Tallaght Hosptial’s Lynn Ward been able to go missing??? Hospital of course so far refusing to take any responsibility. Anything happens to my son on their watch? Lawsuits.

[quote]This is for my Shaney. The light of my life. The lamp of my soul. My blue-eye baby. You will always be my light. We will always be together. No boundary can separate us.

[quote]My beautiful son, Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby. I love you so much. Please be at peace:

[quote]Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor

Good lord - I’m surprised he waited THIS long.

Poor Sinead.

Kid in OPs photo has (had?) brown eyes. I'm not making a difficult brown joke but...Is Sinead sure she's got the right kid?

wow that's heartbreaking

BPD should not have children.

Very sad

[Quote] Like, how has a seventeen year old traumatised young person WHO WAS ON SUICIDE WATCH in Tallaght Hosptial’s Lynn Ward been able to go missing??? Hospital of course so far refusing to take any responsibility. Anything happens to my son on their watch? Lawsuits.

This is a bit rich.

Suicides on psych units are not uncommon ...

I don’t think his eyes look blue at all.

Click on her Twitter at R1. They're blue.

With her as the mother he never stood a chance period

Ummm..

What was on his ipod?

I hate public grieving on Twitter. She has her priorities all fucked up.

I feel bad for him, there are a lot of young men out there like him. They have the deck stacked against them and the help they receive often has no beneficial effect.

Honestly, the best thing they could have probably done for him was have his grandparents raise him.

His father is old enough to be a grandparent. But he's a musician too.

Well, if your psych ward patient is on suicide watch and he escapes and commits suicide, then you’re not doing your job. On top of that, the patient was a minor. The hospital staff don’t sound very competent to me.

And she takes zero ownership. Hasn't she been certifiable since the day he was born?

^ Indeed. She was crazy long before she 2004, when he was (presumably) born.

Crazy loon ass mother. I hate her.

Weird how her "official" page makes no note. I don't know, this kind of smells. I hope I am right and the kid is OK, but I'm sure I'm wrong. What a fucking mess. Hope he's faked this, jumped a boat and is now hanging out in Rocco Richie's flat having some beers and learning how to paint.

A cruel and distressing outcome.

1 down and 3 to go, if indeed this is true. The lady O'Connor has been known to find her fill of attention in unseemly ways.

R20 and R22, I do understand your scepticism, in light of Sinéad's history of unstable behaviour. That said, I can't see the Irish media here reporting on the death of the boy without having investigated it, not least because his father, Dónal Lunny, is also very well known here (and doesn't have Sinéad's reputation for instability).

If it's not true, multiple news sources have been duped I guess. The search for him was originally reported with no mention of who his mother was. And this wasn't the first time he disappeared.

Sinead had a history of missing/running away for a long period of time when she is on her crazy episodes that her kids got used to it.

And this one is from the end of November:

Strange. When he went missing aged 14, they said he was 5'11".

R26, he is just copying what his mother always does except she stays at hotels.

So is he dead or not?

R28 Dolores O’Riardon of The Cranberries died in a hotel room

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

That is terrible.

Nature or nurture? Just yesterday I was thinking about a family we were friends with when I was a kid. My mother claimed that mental illness and depression ran in their family , and she wasn’t wrong. They were talented and funny people, but very troubled. A few suicides, attempts, hospitalizations. The last time I saw my mom’s friend she had gone off the deep end and was spouting conspiracy theories about the coastal evacuation route and fluoride in the water.

It’s a shame.

It's sad, but with Sinead as his mother, the poor kid never had a chance and Ireland seems to have a particularly high rate of mental illness/suicide. Hopefully her other kids have fathers or other family members in their lives that can counteract her crazy

John Waters (not the director) is a writer and father of Sinéad's daughter, Róisín. He's a notorious loon. If anything, crazier than Sinéad.

Inadequate psychiatric care seems to be a hot topic in Ireland these days.

She should never have had ANY kids.

[quote] [R28] Dolores O’Riardon of The Cranberries died in a hotel room

The Irish should stay away from hotel rooms!

When Richard Harris was removed from his hotel room on a gurney, he shouted out to those in the ground floor restaurant: "It was the fish!"

[quote] What was on his ipod?

Don't it make my brown eyes blue

His iPod, you say?

Horrible

That's horribly sad.

*Waiting for a tasteful period to begin cunting*

I want to Sinead to write and sing another album from this. I really do

The curse of the Irish. The other one.

Very, very sad. Someone like her should likely never have children. But, she did. I'm sure she's grieving and this is very painful for her.

Sounds familiar….

Shit happens.

[quote]When he went missing aged 14, they said he was 5'11".

You got a problem with that?

Hmmmmm….

Will this finally push her over the edge or is she just going to act out again and keep making a nuisance of herself? It was so nice not hearing about her embarrassing antics for awhile...

Consider yourself lucky that you get to dismiss this as "embarassing."

R17, No "ownership"? The boy was in the hospital under medical care. What more at that time would you have had Sinead do?

Poor Sinead indeed. I've always had a soft spot for her, I guess because of that pure heartbreaking talent of hers.

I was just looking at her Twitter. Didn't know she currently had an account, she's been kicked off once or twice I think. She's raw and until today was quite funny.

Not surprised she had 4 kids. A lot of mentally ill or personality disordered women seem to like having large families.

Keep pumping out human disasters because the Pope demands fresh meat!

I highly doubt she had kids because of the pope.

Women with personality disorders will usually tell you flat out they had kids so they will always have somebody to love them and take care of them.

Yes, that's how they think the dynamic should work.

R54, You show your utter ignorance of Sinead.

I doubt Sinead will harm herself. If anything, this will be the moment she turns into a real nice granny with a lovely singing voice who smokes weed. I hope she soon receives an OBE

It says she married four times but I could swear she had sworn off men at some point. Is she still a priest? I had read her mother abused her. She seems to have had a breakdown for years. Poor lass.

She said she was gay at one point but explained it away as wanting to pay tribute to a lesbian relationship she had in the past.

[QUOTE] And she takes zero ownership. Hasn't she been certifiable since the day he was born?

Is that her fault though? Someone else messed her up.

[quote]I hate public grieving on Twitter. She has her priorities all fucked up.

You're not forced to read it.

The woman is mentally ill, and it wouldn't surprise me if mental illness runs in the family. Have some compassion for what she's going through.

She's never come across as mean spirited or hateful. She just has a lot of issues. And who knows what kind of treatment she's getting.

So easy judge someone when you don't know their whole story.

R60 Bisexuals often don't realize it's a faux pas to describe themselves as gay.

2 out of 30.

Then she's another experimenting artist doing it for her art. Sounds straight to me.

A horrible thing. I hope Sinead survives it.

[quote][R17], No "ownership"? The boy was in the hospital under medical care. What more at that time would you have had Sinead do?

I'd have had her NOT be a mother. She's been fucked in the head for at least two decades. Do you know any children of severely mentally ill parents? They're often fucked up themselves, and it's no wonder.

Frankly, given her obvious severe and pre-existing mental illness, I think her decision to have children was selfish and immoral. You can't exculpate her entirely by saying she was crazy.

She should have known better than to breed.

Here you go, R10.

He looks a lot like her.

And R49, I think this really will push her over the edge.

Something this traumatic cannot be good for her already fragile mental health.

He really did have an adorable smile.

Poor thing never stood a chance with a mother like Sinead.

All of her mental shit probably took a huge toll on the kid.

This reminds me of Anna Nicole Smith. She had issues and her poor son was very lost and killed himself at 20 years old.

[quote] Consider yourself lucky that you get to dismiss this as "embarassing."

Do I ever!

Having kids is so selfish. I think it is morally unethical to have kids. Anti-Natalist. To have kids is egocentric and self serving.

R74-self serving- you sound like a gasoline station

That kid literally looks like her male twin. I believe she also lost custody of him a couple of years ago for awhile. Very sad situation.

r59 she did and then she tried women exclusively for a while and decided they were too melodramatic, and had to go into hiding to dodge that fallout. She says so much shit seemingly to get a rise out of people it's hard to sort out which was for a laugh or real.

Is she Muslim now?

Sad but I’m not surprised. Genetically, he had no hope. Environmentally, he had no chance.

[quote]It's sad, but with Sinead as his mother, the poor kid never had a chance and Ireland seems to have a particularly high rate of mental illness/suicide.

The Irish are known to be depressive and crazy in higher-than-normal numbers. And then of course there's all the booze, which just makes things so much worse.

She gave up custody of her daughter.

She wrote a letter and called her oldest son “evil”

this lunatic should never have been a mother. shame on her!!

That’s sad. She has a role in his suicide. Her own mental health issues had to affect him.

r80 there's the stereotype of alcoholism but real alcoholism can seriously damage family lines. Consider Russia by the 90s. Or much of the American South. But of course, Ireland also had famine, terrorism, other bits of oppression, so historic trauma plays out thru multiple generations akin to Native Americans that can't seem to escape their stereotypes either.

A VERY difficult brown.

^ Is she particularly associated with that phrase? It seems that she used it on her blog and that's the usage example on Urban Dictionary but she didn't come up with it, right?

[quote]if your psych ward patient is on suicide watch and he escapes and commits suicide, then you’re not doing your job. On top of that, the patient was a minor. The hospital staff don’t sound very competent to me.

[quote][R17], No "ownership"? The boy was in the hospital under medical care. What more at that time would you have had Sinead do?

I know this is DataLounge but I’m still amazed at people blaming Sinead, R16 & R51.

Escaping from a psych ward or psychiatric hospital is like escaping from a prison, patients can’t open doors and nurses do safety checks every 15 minutes, patients at risk of harming themselves or others are watched even closer. Hospitals that discharge high risk patients have been found liable for those patients’ subsequent suicides so it would stand to reason that a patient’s escape and eventual suicide would place a similar liability on the hospital. Regardless of the issues Shane had before he was admitted, the hospital was responsible for his well-being, they failed him and his family.

So they should have tied to him his bed?

tied him to his bed

R88, thank you for your sanity.

How could any child of that woman not turn out with extreme mental issues. Sinead should have been sterilized before she was able to produce children and prohibited by law from adopting children.

r88 Ireland (& the UK for that matter) have very different systems compared to the U.S. . . it's much more laxed and has been for practically 30 years. They also are less inclined to diagnose children, so unless they commit a crime.. the public resources tend to be lacking while the private suffer the same problems as here.

and if they were in the U.S., in all likelihood, he'd be sent to a private facility that's more like a camp or retreat.

It is simply a tragedy. Sinead is sick. Her son was sick. I have no hatred or sarcastic comments for them. Just sympathy. Mental illness, alcoholism, substance abuse is a BITCH. I have seen it destroy so many people. From my own father's death when I was 10. He had a horrible childhood and alcoholism was a natural course.. A great friend of mine (and all of her sisters) were molested by their piece of shit father for years- she died at 38 years old of alcoholism.

Mental Health issues as well as addiction is out of control in our world..

A young human ( 17). He was a real soul

r85, good observation. I do believe generational trauma is real and to an extent genetic memory. It's just traumatized people unintentionally modelling dysfunctional and toxic behavior and poor coping mechanisms to their offspring who pass it along to their offspring and so on and so forth.

r31 - Wow. He looked a lot like his mother.

Bipolars shouldn't have kids. They pass their genetic issues --which are considerable-- onto their kids plus their mental problems make them poor parents who the kids end up having to care for, in a role reversal at far too young of an age. That poor child had already been through too much and suffered too long. I'm so sorry he had to suffer.

[quote]and if they were in the U.S., in all likelihood, he'd be sent to a private facility that's more like a camp or retreat.

R93, I'm not sure what you mean by "private facilities" but private behavioral health [italic]hospitals[/italic] in the U.S. are not like a camp of retreat, neither are psych wards at private hospitals.

Plus the weather...no sun...very depressing.

Good lord but he was the spitting image of his mother. Apparently he also inherited her instability. I like Sinead ,always have,and I hope she can survive this fairly intact. Im so afraid one day shes going to do the same thing.

As someone who had a BPD narcissist mother - I would have absolutely have killed myself if it hadn’t have been for my dad. Feel so sorry for Shane. He never had a chance. Sinead should have never have had children.

r96 and too many people dismiss the lasting damage of substance use. . . even with knowledge of addicts, it's hard for people to imagine the sort of addiction that can maintain a devestating hold on an entire community and spread through multiple generations.

r98 I didn't say they were but many of the popular celebrity hospitals are run more like retreats or camps, ranches were popular for a while, still, they just tend to be isolated and rural. The stigma remains very real. One of the most popular is a boarding school in Vermont but they are a bit better than the mass commercialization of private rehab centers that have popped up over the last few decades .

And getting or paying for those can be difficult for most, so one of the more popular moves is to throw their children (16+) out with the hopes that they'll be run through the public systems, qualify for entry into a group home and inevitably disability. Many stand on the sidelines but it's often the only way parents can afford such resources. The costs quickly pile up - largely having to do with education requirements and higher risks of injury.

In the UK, though, there are legitimate facilities but to get there is to exhaust all the other resources, head to courts or be convicted of a crime, the beds are simply too few. This is a reality after the stain aslyums left.

In Ireland, given the politics and history, the stigma is quite a bit more prevalent with high portion feeling it's a stigma against the nation and it's primary people.

there was a uk reality series showing the comparable facilities called "Don't Call Me Crazy" but you'll find most documentaries on the UK/Scotland/Ireland's child mental health practices are far different with most parents left to having to manage it at home with a scattering of group homes for moderate cases -- and the children can easily be kicked out of them for not complying or the funding simply running out. and like the u.s., many end up having to mortgage their homes, downsize, use up every bit of funding they have because there's simply not enough resources to go around.

and of course, again, they're far less likely to give an actual diagnosis until they're older... which makes it all that more rougher for parents to get help for their children. worse yet when it's an unstable home.

Sinead is exactly the type of person who should have never had children....But I guess I know who to put on my celebrity death pool

R12, sadly was my first thought.

I imagine this poor kid got shit left and right for being her son, "oh, your ma is crazy Sinead" etc. Her behavior and reputation no doubt effected his every day, and she had no money left to help pad it.

Condolences to Sinead.

Worst thing for any parent to have to go through.

i can never understand how people can make jokes about these sorts of events.

Sometimes I forget DL has one big cold heart.

She has bipolar disorder if not a personality disorder on top of it, and I've heard that she refuses to take mood-stabilizing meds for the bipolar. Which would certainly explain her regularly spaced public breakdowns, she's been going manic every so often in the full glare of international publicity.

Which is brutal on a dependent child, excruciating pain and ongoing guilt. As noted people with severe mental illness have an awful tendency to force their children to become their caregivers, and of course, children always blame themselves and feel horribly guilty if anything goes seriously wrong in the family's life... and this kid was in a situation where he'd been made to feel responsible for his mother's welfare and he'd feel a thousandfold burden of guilt if anything went wrong for her. And of course, if she really was refusing to take medication for her bipolar disorder... she'd be guaranteeing that things wen horrificially wrong every few years.

If I'm right about her, she's fucked the poor kid over his entire life, and she can burn in hell along with the kiddie-diddling priests.

You nailed it R107 - that was my exact experience with my mother and it almost killed me. The reason Sunead’s daughter is doing well is because her ex fought for full custody due to Sinead’s neglect. Unfortunately it seems like Shane lacked an involved father.

Shit health care system. She probably had to wait months just to get an appointment with a specialist

Thoughts but no prayers.

R68, Do you not know the meaning of "at that time"?

Stop blaming Sinead. Suicidal teens aint nuthin new. Ask Romeo & Juliet. The focus should be who was on duty. Like Jeffrey Epstein's guards.

No, she shouldn’t have had kids. But she’s nuts. She wasn’t exactly thinking things through.

[quote]26 hours after my son died in the so called care of the Irish State in the form of Tusla, I have yet to receive any contact from Tusla or their representatives. I was informed by Gardai of my son’s death and later I spoke with the GAL. No contact from Tusla is unacceptable.

[quote]My lawyer received this from Tusla’s lawyer. Can tusla pls finally note my child is not named “the remains”. His name is Shane “Yes, I’m instructed that your client has been advised that the identification of the remains will take place this afternoon”.

[quote]I have now formally identified the remains of my son, Shane. May God forgive the Irish State for I never will.

[quote]Now tusla want to discuss with me “a media release” no doubt wishing to have me join in their efforts to make this death of my child seem like it wasn’t at the hands of the Irish State.

[quote]Tusla and HSE to release dishonest ass covering statement in response to international questioning. A load of lies,refusals to accept responsibility. Couched as always in the omnipotent and false concern they claim to have for the privacy of the children who die on their watch

[quote]I’m going to take private time now to grieve my son. When I am ready I will be telling exactly how the Irish State in the ignorant, evil, self-serving, lying forms of Tusla and the HSE enabled and facilitated his death. Magdalene Ireland never went away. Ask the youth.

[quote]And any statement out of Tusla suggesting they a) did their best b) care or c) have deepest sympathies for anyone here but their lawyers, is a load of crap trap that has killed too many kids and it isn’t going to wash this time. Too many kids are dying on Tusla’s watch.

Tusla - child protection agency

GAL - guardian ad litem

HSE - Ireland's public health system

17 is an adult in Ireland, for the people calling him a child.

Poor kid. He never stood a chance with that LOON as a mother. F-you Sinead you crazy nasty bitch!

"No, she shouldn’t have had kids. But she’s nuts. "

She shouldn't have been allowed to raise children as a single mother. If a sane father wouldn't step in and provide primary care, then another relative should have, or at last resort, the state. Better an orphanage than a batshit crazy single parent, children can't grow up right without at least one sane person in their lives.

Her other kids seem fine....

R120 ………….For now.

You know what I see at R114?

I see a crazy lady playing the victim, and taking no responsibility for her child's death.

She's trying to place the blame solely on the "system," while ignoring the fact that her own actions probably played a huge part in her child's death.

Nothing is ever YOUR fault, is it Sinead?

Sinead was institutionalized as a child herself. Then she deliberately torpedoed her mainstream career on behalf of children -- though it took decades for people to finally give her an ounce of respect she deserved for speaking out child abuse.

She was tweeting about Shane's escape before he was discovered.

Others were assigned care-custody of Shane and are responsible. They're professionals who earn salaries for taking care of endangered kids. And I don't see any of you fuckers asking -- How come the dad's not also being crucified for Shane's suicide....?

I hope Sinead installs more reforms for Irish kids.

What a shame. But Sinead was indeed calling for help while Shane was still alive.

I hope Sinead tweets the exact names of the individuals who were charged with caring for Shane.

But what got Shane institutionalized in the first place, R123?

Did the system and those "negligent" individuals put him there? Were they responsible for his mental illness?

As many others have mentioned here, whatever happened in HER household with this child, drove him to want to kill himself.

Her own mental illness placed a huge burden on him. Anyone with mentally ill parents can tell you this.

And you have no idea what went on in that house, before he was institutionalized.

You keep saying that these people should be named and held accountable, but if this ever did go to court, I guarantee that all the dirt about Sinead's own negligence and abuse towards Shane would come out.

R123, Ireland's health system leaves an awful lot to be desired but (as someone who lives in Ireland) I don't remember any scandals here about psychiatric patients being allowed to wander out of "suicide watch" and subsequently killing themselves. As R124 and others have noted, the genetic and environmental factors that shaped that poor lad's life gave him very poor odds of getting through it in one piece. That said, I do hope that the circumstances of the boy's leaving the facility are investigated, as they should be in any case like this.

My mother was probably undiagnosed BPD. She wasn't half as crazy as Snead, but it was still enough to mess me up very badly. It is the height of selfishness to have a bunch of kids if you know you are not mentally stable. But I also blame the fathers. Everyone not to stick their dick in crazy, yet 4 men thought it was a good idea to breed with this nut? All her children are suffering, I guarantee it.

"A month ago Shane was brought to CAMHS after vanishing leaving suicide notes including detailed funeral plans. They discharged him. Said he had no plans. When objections were raised by the adult with him she was told “planning a funeral is no different to planning a wedding”

We need to stop throwing people away. Sinead is someone who comes from the margins. If we want the margins to go away, we have to stand in them. We need to stop the demonizing. We need to stop pretending that those on the margins don’t matter. Is her a life a total mess? Yes! Can she help herself? No! This is what mental illness LOOKS LIKE. I feel sorry for her — she is a living, breathing Wound. Why would we punish Wound? That doesn’t even make sense.

And yes, she has every right to call out the system. The hospital is indeed liable for what happened to him.

I believe she lost custody of two of her kids,Shane to the system and her eldest daughter to her ex husband.

[quote] she did and then she tried women exclusively for a while and decided they were too melodramatic,

LOL

When it's always someone else, no matter where you go? Honey...it's YOU.

We can’t blame the government for a kid killing himself. Sinead has a history of blaming others as the cause of her misery. Her misery is due to the choice to have children knowing full well her own unhappiness with life and the misery that is existence. Yes, the church was wrong, the fathers who impregnated her were wrong, her parents were wrong, the caretakers were wrong - but as an adult she chose to perpetuate the horror of life for her own selfish ends. Everyone who brings a child into the world is to blame.

She cried about the injusties of the pope and Christianity/Catholicism and then she converts to islam.

Haunted and haunting looking kid. It's a horrible story. I like Sinead and she has a right to be angry. Even if she is totally fucked up, her kid was a ward of the state and they should have kept a better eye on him as it seems he has been suicidal lately.

[quote]She did and then she tried women exclusively for a while and decided they were too melodramatic.

Right on! There is only room for ONE melodramatic human in this relationship.

That’s really sad. Poor kid

having worked in the system and one time being briefly on the other side of it... much of what happens is out of the immediate workers hands. It goes up to the highest ranks of government... which often doesn't know jack shit of what they're doing. Like homeless services, many of our facilities have become foreign interest held. They've become businesses out of necessity with gross budget cuts and inane 'wellness' laws passed, or the occasional flash in the pan story that sets off a trend. The last few decades the trend has been integration and mainstreaming. And, for the good and bad of it, Covid has been shining a bright spotlight on the cracks in the system. And the decades before that we saw the widespread closure of longterm public facilities; some bad and many necessary. . . but the bad overshadowed the realities we're dealing with now. There's very little middle ground because rational doesn't apply to crazy.

on the other side, I recall a young woman so desperate to commit suicide... she bit off her own tongue to try to drown in her own blood.

Another who smashed and dug his way through the wall to set the room on fire. So, what do you do when someone's not responding to medication, too high of a risk to give more and you can't safely restrain them? There wasn't enough in the budget for steel walls.

I'd also ask people to look at youth facilities and question if they could possibly have escaped one.

Many youth facilities are low security - the system as well as the public does grossly underestimate them. They don't want to see youth abused but they don't want to see these kinds of events either.

We cycle through these debates year after year, decade after decade, and we still have no real solutions.

" I feel sorry for her — she is a living, breathing Wound. Why would we punish Wound? "

We don't blame her for her own pain and mental illness.

We blame her for passing the pain and mental illness on to four innocent children.

This reminds me of when Dana Plato offed herself and her son did the same thing a few years later. Fucking sad.

Poor kid hung himself. gGrowing up in Covid times probably didn't help his mental state. And Sinead is blaming herself. I hope people back off a little. Suicide does indeed have a contagious effect. that's why most news agencies often refrain from covering too deeply folks who jump off buildings.

"FYI please don’t imagine I am less than keenly aware I failed my child, alongside Tusla and the HSE and the Irish State. And alongside others in his life who shall forever remain publicly nameless. We all know who we are. We all failed him. Welcome to Ireland."

She’s a crazy woman. She must have driven him crazy.

No wonder he took his own life, his whole life was marred by his mothers public mental illness. He never had a chance to be a carefree child. Sinead was screaming nonsense all the time, would go missing for long periods during her kids youth and was suicidal herself. She has a tendency to find men, women and now “god” to date yet never seemed bothered enough to focus solely on her two kids. Im sad for him and his brother.

No one calls out crazy dudes for having children. Or for being focused on things other than their kids.

R142, Sinead has 4 kids. not 2.

R140 Not to be a dick, but that post was her shoving blame for this off onto Ireland. Like, either the place itself or the entirety of the country. Now it's everybody's fault.

The best way to communicate to others that you understand the gravity of the situation and that you played a significant role in causing it is to just stay off of Twitter for a while. If she has time and the inclination to rant about her dead son publicly, and to be throwing accusations at other people, she's not saying "I blame myself."

[quote]F-you Sinead you crazy nasty bitch!

It's really concerning how many people on DL apparently believe someone brings mental illness on themselves, as if it was their choice to become bipolar, and those people should "go to hell like the pedos when they die" because of their presumed sins and/or choices.

If you say anything about the incessant blaming of Sinead for her own illness, people respond that they're not blaming her, but come on, nearly every post in this thread is blaming her.

And I'd bet almost none of you even knew she had a 17-year-old son before this news. Now, suddenly, you want her dead for what she did to this poor boy. In two weeks, you'll have forgotten this ever happened.

Nobody blames Sinead for being mentally ill. We blame her for having 4 FUCKING KIDS when she wasn't fit to take care of herself. And the fathers are equally culpable.

People romanticize Ireland, for better and worse.

R148 The Irish get away with acting like hillbillies without being socially stigmatized for it. An American woman who wrote R1, which happens all the time, would not be pitied by anyone and would be viciously mocked and accused of attention-seeking.

It's like if West Virginia was a country, but we were expected to pretend it was France.

The mom doesn't just have BPD. If she's anything like my mother, she has schizophrenia as well. I was pretty suicidal 12-17 especially being homeschooled and stuck with her all day. But going to college was the best thing to happen to me.

R138, but what you fail to understand is that mentally ill people WILL make bad choices, like having children, no matter how much we scream and rant, they will keep doing it. Is it because they are bad people? No, they are not bad people, they are just self-absorbed people. You think Sinead doesn’t feel shame and guilt for bearing four children and bringing them into a broken world through a broken mother? I doubt it. They (the mentally ill) don’t need to be leveled, they need to be loved. Trust me, they will keep having kids. And they belong to us!!! They are part of us — so we owe it to them to help them have their dignity restored, as much as possible.

I hate to say this R151, but sorry. I have my own problems.

I grew up in a totally dysfunctional and insane household, and I suffer from depression and anxiety. And even I knew better than to have kids.

There is no way I would have dumped all my baggage on any possible offspring, thereby making them as miserable and unhappy as I am.

I knew it would be a selfish thing to do.

That's why people are angry at Sinead. She never should have had any kids, and she is SMART ENOUGH to have known better.

After reading this thread, I think someone needs to do a wellness check on irish treasures Cillian Murphy & Jamie Dornan! Maybe Paul Mescal too!

R149 is an idiot who has never been to Ireland and perhaps not even West Virginia. This comparison really irks that shit out of me.

Most Irish people aren't like Sinead and thinks she's unstable like most Americans do.

r143 Seriously? They do all the bloody time... especially classic Hollywood. Though true, it's often more for the standout of symptoms, most famous males with mental illness were highlighted by addiction or violence. and people generally felt it was more important to focus on those issues. Perhaps in that they are less inclined to excuse negative behavior from men and many feel that if mental health is mentioned, it's being mentioned as an excuse, a scapegoat. otherwise we might look at RDJ, Robin Williams, Elton John (his legendary temper tantrums and the decision to have children), Bing Crosby, John Lennon, a plethora of classic and older actors, certainly.

Telling an Irish-Catholic — from Ireland! — not to have kids is like telling Catholic women from Central and South America and Mexico to engage in smarter birth control.... Irish women are stereotypically prone to large broods

R154 You have no idea how right I am.

R156 Are you posting from the 1880s?

Abortion wasn't even legal until a few years ago? I can't remember but they are backwards in everything.

R107 You must be a kiddie diddler yourself. You're awfully obsessed with it.

Yet again, don't project Irish Catholic on Sinead O'Connor- her beef with the Pope is long running and well documented. She is her own animal.

[quote]Abortion wasn't even legal until a few years ago? I can't remember but they are backwards in everything.

That's rich coming from an American.

[quote]Irish women are stereotypically prone to large broods

No, there not.

[quote]The issue is.. we are a third world country. We have 12 beds in special care for suicidal teenagers. And no resources to save those who can’t manage life. 128 icu beds in the whole Country. Tusla did their best. We all did: and I am deeply sorry to have blamed anyone.

[quote]Fyi. Shane was Hindu. So the funeral will be just his mother and father. This was also the wish Shane expressed in his suicide notes. If you’re going to send anything to the mortuary at Loughlinstown hospital pls send flowers or Hindu objects. Shane O’Connor.

[quote]Alternatively flowers or Hindu objects can be sent to Newlands Cross crematorium. I believe the ceremony is to be on Thursday.

[quote]Ok, I’m gonna do the right thing here and apologise for my lashing out. Tusla are working with very limited resources. They loved shane. They are broken hearted. They are human. I am sorry I have upset them. We are a third world country. It’s not their fault.

To call Sinead emotionally fragile is an understatement—she is an extremely troubled woman with a massive history of depression/mental illness/suicide threats. I am assuming it runs in her genes. I unfortunately would not be surprised if she takes her own life over this. It is extremely sad.

Ireland has 200-300 ICU beds, increasing to 350 if there is a surge in COVID.

It's not good, but its more than double what Sinead claims. She's correct about Ireland being on the bottom of the barrel for ICU beds per capita, considering its GDP per capita, which is, well AMAZING - perhaps 2nd among developed countries!!!!!!!!!!!

In short, there is no WAY that globally Ireland can be considered a "3rd world country" when in fact, it is now stinking rich.

R165 She meant psych isolation, where they lock suicidal people in a padded room so they don't kill themselves.

She typed ICU BEDS.

"128 icu beds in the whole Country"

Wouldn't it have been awesome if she played Alpha on The Walking Dead series?

Insanely low population - like 5 million people. Everyone died or moved here to the US. So don't be too astonished by the per capitas...

There are about 4 million people in LA.

R15 his father is Donal Lunny, a giant of Irish traditional music. RIP Shane.

The boy was Hindu? He really was his mother's son, eh? Is she still claiming to be Muslim?

"Telling an Irish-Catholic — from Ireland! — not to have kids is like telling Catholic women from Central and South America and Mexico to engage in smarter birth control"

Sinead has been telling the Pope and the church to go fuck themselves for her entire adult life, it's not like she believes in the church's anti-birth-control idiocy. But she has bipolar disorder at least, either untreated or poorly controlled, and she's had a lot of manic episodes. When a person is manic, everything seems like a great idea, from spending all your money on handbags to playing in the traffic to getting pregnant when you're batshit crazy.

So she failed herself and her children by allowing herself to get pregnant when she's incapable of raising a child, the children's fathers failed the kids if they didn't provide a home among sane people, the extended family failed, the state failed.

That’s true r149. I come from Irish ancestry and half my family is trash. These people are Irish too.

^ Travellers are totally unrepresentative of the Irish population. They're less than 1% of the population but something like 10% of the prison population.

"...the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness"

A claim has been made that the terrible Irish potato famine of the 1840s caused epigenetic changes that cause schizophrenia, bipolar, and other severe mental illnesses.

The British have a lot to answer for, importing food from Ireland while the people starved.

but couldn't they keep the potatoes for themselves?

No, R177. Watch a documentary or two.

Also it was the IRISH selling their bounty abroad. They didn't have potatoes but they had PLENTY of other foods. The Irish ruling classes were complicit in killing their own peasants. It's grim. The famine was completely unnecessary but the peasants were not the traditional consumers of GOOD irish food and animals. The poor lived on potatoes. There was no potatoes, so they died.

Someone won a Nobel prize for analyzing famines in both the ancient and modern world, and concluded that in most famines there's enough food to feed everyone, but people still die from lack of access to the food, mostly because they can't afford to buy food. So it was in the Irish potato famine, there was plenty of food other than potatoes, but it was owned by wealthy landowners who wanted to sell it for profit, and the poor couldn't afford to buy any. And most of the landowners chose to sell the food that grew on their lands abroad for profit, and maintain their lifestyles rather than feed the starving.

Another factor in Irish mental illness could be centuries of late paternal age, it was traditional for men to hold off on marrying until their father died and left them master of the house or farm. And late paternal age has been shown to have an association with mental illness in offspring fathered by men over forty or whatever, but somehow, this little factoid never gets much play in a media dominated by straight men.

Theres truth to that R179 ! I knew a guy who started a second family in his early 50s and those 2 kids were a nightmare while his 1st 3 were all very stable and well grounded. The 2nd wife was really a nice lady,so I doubt it was nurture. They had all kinds of crap like adhd,etc. In fact,they still live at home in their 20s and he supports them!

R179, I resemble that comment.

Charlie Chaplin had a bunch of late life children - up to his 70s I believe, with his wife Oona, who herself had mental illness (Eugene O'Neill's daughter and I think he had mental issues as well - remember his autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night" in which the mother is a morphine addict?)

Anyway, does anybody know if Geraldine Chaplin and her many siblings have any issues? I think mother Oona died of pancreatic cancer brought on by alcoholism.

Sorry to ramble - have a few of the green genes meself.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing a place like Ireland doesn't necessarily cause mental illness, but exacerbate it: the gray weather, the patriarchy, the poverty, the island you can't escape from. I also think it's still very hard for young men, even in the US, to express their sadness & struggles in a way that's okay for girls. Scotland never suffered from famine, but certainly has a long, troubled history & seems to suffer from similar issues.

The Catholic Church in Ireland - though the people are very rapidly secularising. Don't know if the Presbyterian Church had such a heavy thrall over Scotland as the church did in Ireland.

Ireland isn't "grey" it is mostly sunny with weather that changes a lot such as flash showers.

R183, you forgot to mention the alcohol.

The omnipresence of alcohol and the traditional drinking culture, where men are expected to drown their sorrows rather than express their feelings, plus the poverty and everything else you mention. That means very high rates of alcoholism, and whatever effects on the gene pool you get with centuries of alcoholism.

[quote]I'm no expert, but I'm guessing a place like Ireland doesn't necessarily cause mental illness, but exacerbate it: the gray weather, the patriarchy, the poverty, the island you can't escape from.

[quote]The omnipresence of alcohol and the traditional drinking culture, where men are expected to drown their sorrows rather than express their feelings, plus the poverty and everything else you mention.

Poverty? What fucking century are you living in? And how is America any different than Ireland when it comes to men having difficulty expressing their feelings compared to women?

Seriously, it's like a poster a while back complaining that unlike Americans, women in the [italic]Soviet Union[/italic] don't get sentimental when having a baby; "they just get on with".

The potato famine is over Sinead needs to get a grip.

she's heavily spiraling downward right now.... poor, poor gal. she fully agrees with all the hatred against her posted above. damn.

She said one her Twitter feed that none of her kids want to know her - there is a reason for that. I count my lucky stars everyday that I survived my sadistic mother. So many don't.

see? sinead is cool as shit -- when her levels are balanced. what a pretty smile.

Sinéad is now expressing a wish to commit suicide.

And says that the police are taking her to hospital.

what a nutter!

Sinead is a drama queen!

yes, I can't imagine growing up with a mom like that....poor kids.

[quote]yes, I can't imagine growing up with a mom like that....poor kids.

I was thinking that too; it's a horrible time, she's making it all about herself & putting her kids on blast on social media for being understandably fed up with her antics. "Oh, I am going to kill myself - but at least my kids that hate me will finally be happy! Kisses, Mummy!"

R189 She's probably been snooping on here reading all of this, given the demographics of DL and her apparent heavy internet usage.

Get off of the internet, Sinéad. Half of the posters here are fake, and plenty are aware you might read what they write and are looking to draw some blood.

She should sing and write about it- if God gave you gifts, use them to help others? Maybe that will heal her.

Fucking Covid.

I love you Sinead, even if you are batshit and annoying. Go have a nice long rest.

I am bipolar also. I wasn’t properly diagnosed until age 33, but at least I knew that there was something very wrong with me, even before my diagnosis. I am grateful that I knew even in junior high that I could never reproduce and that my problem was genetic. My mother was a violent bipolar and her father was a paranoid schizophrenic. I have 100% Irish ancestry. Funny things happen genetically on islands, because individuals can’t escape their genetic past and future. I have heard that bipolar disorder is off the charts in Ireland. Plus very one either is an alcoholic, or is a survivor of one or more.

I can relate to Sinead. She is an incredible nightmare for family member, but her music is divine. I don’t think she will live to a long age.

[quote]I have heard that bipolar disorder is off the charts in Ireland.

Really???

[quote]Plus very one either is an alcoholic, or is a survivor of one or more.

Idiot.

"She said one her Twitter feed that none of her kids want to know her - there is a reason for that."

Just out of curiosity, was that before this tragedy?

But the truth is, people with serious, long-term, poorly controlled or untreatable mental illnesses can't be good parents, they just can't. Yes, I believe they can love their children with their entire being and want nothing more than unconditional familial love, but the illness keeps them from understanding what children need and/or giving it. R201 has it right, my depressed ass has it right, some of us just shouldn't pass on our genes or attempt parenting. Getting myself functional has proven to be the work of a lifetime, parenting was never an option.

Actually, R9, they are not very common. He had eloped from a psych unit and was found dead outside somewhere.

R205 Is eloped really the term that gets used? What a weird choice.

I'm not R205, but that is the word for what he did; not to be confused with wandering or leaving against medical advice.

Once an elopement attempt has been made, or if a patient is deemed high-risk at the outset, it's time for the brightly colored gown.

One of sinead's newest compositions is Horse on a Highway, which is just a bare-bones demo.

Sinead had already said the song wasn't about Shane running away and Sinead pleading for his return.

But each lyric now perfectly fits Sinead's present circumstances. Eerie....

She’s suicidal.

R151 is right. I say that as the child of a very mentally ill woman, who psychologically tortured me throughout my childhood and who I currently have no relationship with. R151 is still right.

As predicted, Sinead is now hospitalized after threatening suicide on Twitter.

How does one commit suicide on Twitter, does it have a live stream component I’m not aware of?

I assumed it would go this route (her now threatening suicide). She's done it many times before, but this time she has her own son's suicide as a rationale. It's tragic all around. She should be kept locked down and sedated for some time, and then forced to undergo intense therapy. She needs a lot of help, but I don't think she will commit to it unless she is forced to.

Charade at the Tony's

If there's an afterlife, Sinead needs to stay alive for a while longer. Give your deceased son some fucking space for once.

I wouldn't automatically blame the hospital for this. A hospital is not a locked-down correctional facility. I don't know if it would even be legal for a hospital to lock somebody in a building or room. People want to find someone to blame.

Shane was on suicide watch. Just like Jeffrey Epstein.

At least she’s in a hospital now. Hopefully she can get some real lasting help. My aunt and uncle committed suicide as adults and my grandma was devastated but never took it this hard.

Can someone summarize what her deal is? Has she been clinically diagnosed? Was she abused? Closet case? What’s her deal?

[quote]At least she’s in a hospital now.

She was tweeting a few hours ago, after the funeral.

Of course she’s in the psych hospital after this. Sinead is crazy as fuck.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Was the dress code specifically casual? Why wear a jogging suit?

R222-

She is like the personification of a Greek tragedy.

I agree R225. I can't be snarky about this, it's just pure tragedy all around.

R224 Wow.

Sinead sure once had a lot. Beauty, talent, rebelliousness. This is grim.

R228 A long, unending punishment for stepping out of line.

Never shave your heads, ladies.

Mental illness is no joke. I wish her peace, but feel this is going to haunt her forever.

Losing a child to suicide is devastating for any parent, let alone someone with brain health issues.

"[R228] A long, unending punishment for stepping out of line."

I disagree, I think her entire life is a illustration of what happens to people who get inadequate treatment or no treatment for serious mental illnesses.

Or what happens in a country where the mentally ill don't end up wandering the streets for lack of available treatment.

Now THIS bitch needs to be in a conservatorship. Pftt.

How’s she doing?

Bump

Why bump this thread? The son is still dead.

The son is still dead and so is Eric Bohleart.

She's fine (by her standards,) she sends her love.

Celebrity Crazy Match: Sinead vs Roseanne - they should have a reality show. Who else qualifies? Wendy Williams?

Roseanne was never randomly riding a bike around Joliet. Although she could use the cardio

Just remove everything after the apostrophe because that's what this is about.

The kid was a teenager, it's not anyone knew anything about him.

How’d he kill himself? Did he jump from something? Hanging?

How horrible. Sending them prayers and love.🙏👩‍👦