Campaign for John Hunt

Who is Campaign for John Hunt?

John Hunt is an Irish citizen who was involuntarily detained as a psychiatric patient. The conditions of Hunt's detention have been the subject of a sustained campaign by his former partner and mother of his child Gráinne Humphrys. He was committed as an involuntary psychiatric patient in 2005 and was detained at a secure psychiatric unit in Cork until August 2011 when he was transferred to the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum, Dublin. Until 2010 he was not granted leave for any temporary release from the Cork facility to visit his family. As a result of the campaign of his former partner that year the Cork hospital allowed Hunt six hours unsupervised leave every two weeks. However, following a violent altercation with a psychiatric nurse this leave was rescinded and Hunt was transferred to the main Irish forensic psychiatric unit in Dundrum.

As of 2013, Humphrys is still being quoted in the Irish press about Hunt's apparently ongoing psychiatric detention: "I am very critical about how his admission was dealt with – it was with the use of force and coercion. He didn’t want to take the medication at the time of his admission and I thought, fair enough. I couldn’t understand why there was not a better method of communication that we could use with him, like open dialogue."