How to ask the question that could save a life

■ Ciaran Tierney discovers it is not harmful to bring up topic of suicide with a person having a tough time in their life.

It is probably the question none of us ever want to ask a friend, colleague, or family member. And yet, as a group of about 40 of us discovered at a Galway hotel last week, it is the exact question which can save a life.

“Are you suicidal?” For many of us, in the wake of an unprecedented number of tragedies in the city and county in recent weeks, it’s a question which hardly bears thinking about.

Console, the national suicide prevention and bereavement support charity, brought people from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages together at the Clayton Hotel. They had all registered for a three-hour course which each person in the room hoped would go some way towards changing their lives and those of the people around them.

There was a nervous, tense atmosphere in the room before the course started. Each person was present to learn and talk about an issue which has devastated families and communities in Galway city and county in recent weeks and months.

The timing of the course seemed all the more poignant given that at least five suicides were recorded in the county the previous weekend. A senior Garda based in Ballinasloe warned only last week that it is now the biggest threat facing communities across the West of Ireland – and that there needs to be change throughout our society to tackle the problem.

By 10pm, as the course concluded, the transformation in the room was amazing. People who had been silent and apprehensive at the start of the Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) course were suddenly delighted to talk to strangers and share their hopes that they could make a difference to their communities, families, places of work, and sports clubs.

The idea behind the course, which was originally developed by Professor Paul Quinnett in the United States, is quite simple. It urges participants to look out for warning signs and then to ask a question which could save a life.

Paul Kelly, founder of Console, opened the course by talking about the death of his own 21-year old sister, Sharon, which prompted him to set up the organisation in 2002. Amid the pain and grief which followed his sister’s death, her family members kept asking themselves and each other why she had taken her own life.

Sharon was about to start a new life in Australia, and gave away her most valuable possessions, when she took the decision which devastated her family’s lives.

“We would have understood why if she had chronic depression. Her friends used to come and confide in her. I saw the impact which suicide had at first hand. We kept asking how we could have missed this. All of a sudden, I felt I did not know my younger sister,” said Paul.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.