Prevent suicide – enroll in an ‘Asist’ course today!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Last night I dreamed I was walking along Raven Terrace towards the Claddagh, when I felt a finger tap me on my shoulder. Turning around I was equally delighted and confused to see my friend Mark Logan, who died ridiculously young last Spring.

Sporting a rugged full-set beard that accentuated his magnificent chin, Mark appeared as full of life as ever.

“Great to see you mate, but how … what are you doing here?”

“I’m heading into town, Charlie!” he replied nonchalantly, with a jaunty bounce in his step.  Putting his arm around my back in a comforting embrace he asked:  “So what about the Chelsea, eh? Never mind that FA Cup disaster, I think we’re going to win both the Premiership and the Champions League this season!”

It was such a pleasure to spend some time with him, even if it was in another realm. People say that death takes the good ones early, but irony was spread all over this particular tragedy, as Mark spent his life working to save the lives of others.

In a beautifully eloquent and deeply moving eulogy, his young widow spoke at his funeral of the calls she had received from people whose lives had been saved by Mark, through his work in suicide prevention and mental health.

Mark used to encourage us all to say ‘hello’ to strangers on the street.

“You never know,” he’d smile, “something as simple as that might save a life.”

Suicide prevention is a subject very close to my heart and many years ago I served for a while on a committee that sought to reduce the number of young male suicides in a particular area of Galway.

Sadly, I found the experience incredibly frustrating, because there seemed to me to be a glaring and evident truth that everyone was ignoring: the terrifyingly large number of young men who kill themselves in Ireland is mirrored by the incredibly small number of openly gay men in this country.

Having lived and worked in three continents, I’ve never met so few Out Loud and Proud men as I have here in Ireland.

I’m not ignoring the female population, but according to the National Suicide Research Foundation, out of 507 Irish suicides in 2012, a staggering 413 were male. That is quite simply an unacceptable state of affairs.

Many of the members of that committee refused to acknowledge the link I was making, yet I stuck to my guns. Sadly I did my argument no favours by trying to shock them into acceptance. Looking around the table at 20 middle-aged people, I pointed out that there were in the room at least two lesbians, two gay men and a minimum of four bisexuals.

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