Jail term triggers breaking point

DEAN KOZANIC/The Press

SAD LOSS: Tracy (left) and Lyn Barry, lost a brother and son, Daniel, to suicide

Daniel Barry

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Tracy Barry believed her brother would be kept safe from self-harm when he entered Christchurch Men's Prison in 2008.

However, after just a day in a segregated unit, Daniel Barry was found unconscious in the prison yard.

Barry, 21, died in Christchurch Hospital the next day.

He had not been placed in the at-risk unit despite a history of drug abuse, depression and suicide attempts.

His sister said she would never get over his death.

Sitting in the kitchen of her Somerfield home, she said she especially missed her brother at birthdays because he always put so much thought into his presents.

She and her mother, Lyn Barry, said Daniel was always very emotional, a sensitive man who was good at hiding things.

In the last 18 months of his life he got into hard drugs and became "really cagey".

He started to get "moody" and avoid questions about where he had been and what he had been doing.

Tracy Barry said her brother was pleased when he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders.

No-one in the family had any idea just how bad things were until a suicide attempt three weeks before his death. He was scared of going to jail after being arrested for burglary and theft – crimes to fund his drug habit.

"He never told the family about his suicidal thoughts, probably didn't want to worry us," Tracy Barry said.

"I wish now that he had shared it and we had asked more questions," she said.

"No-one really knows how much a person is suffering.

"Getting into hard drugs was the turning point," she said.

Lyn Barry said there was nothing worse as a parent than "losing your child".

"I'll never get over the fact that he's not going to walk through the door," she said.

- © Fairfax NZ News