Laravel Passing Request Object 5.2

Why can't I pass Request object to another method in my controller. Also, I'm getting whitescreen and cant see error messages. Log is writable, tried putting error_reporting(E_ALL) in public/index.php

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Http\Requests;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Input;

class DashboardController extends Controller
{

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware('auth');
    }

    public function index(Request $request)
    {
        $options = array();
        $this->createMailbox($request);
    }

    protected function createMailbox($request, $options)
    {

        $client_id = $request->input('client_id');

via Chebli Mohamed