Purge of the last stigma could be vital lifesaver

Country Living with Frank Farragher

It probably has taken us all a long time to grow up in Ireland but at least over the past few decades or so, we gradually have opened up our minds a little and learned to accept that everyone doesn’t have to be the same in our society and in terms of such things as religion, race, colour and sexuality, there is nothing wrong about not conforming with the norm.

One of the last great stigmas now being cleaned out of the cupboard is that of mental health, and in hindsight, growing up in the 1960s we only heard of this topic being discussed if someone was bad with ‘the nerves’ or had ‘gone to Ball’ or ‘the mental’ or to ‘céilí house’.

Another common term in rural Ireland back in those times was that someone ‘had taken to the bed’ – although again with the help of hindsight and knowledge, those were obviously cases of depression where sufferers just couldn’t face the outside world, often for periods of months at a time.

As in the sordid and hidden world of child sex abuse in Ireland, where the real scandal lay, was in ‘The Establishment’ cover-up of the problem, much the same thinking applied to mental health issues in Ireland. There were also cases of family disputes in places where someone would be sent to St. Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe, and often never come out again. Years later and completely institutionalised, there was never any chance of those individuals being re-integrated into what we would call normal society.

There has been a remarkable change in culture though over recent years with two of the country’s biggest organisations – the GAA and the IFA – playing very active roles in promoting a positive picture in terms of getting stuff out into the open as regards mental health issues.

Support groups like Console, Aware, The Galway East Live Support group and Pieta House, to mention just a few, also provide a wonderful network of support and helplines. There is a lot of help out there and yet, hardly a week or a month passes, without us hearing word that someone else has taken their own life.

Suicide has touched us all over the years, whether it be a family member, a friend, a neighbour or maybe just a passing acquaintance. At the absolute core of trying to provide help is the issue of trying to get inside someone else’s head – how do you find out what’s going on in the deepest caverns of the mind and how can you spot any external signals that everything is not as it should be.

This is not by any means an easy thing to do. There have been cases where people have taken their own lives without any indication that such an action could have been contemplated but in others, little signs may have been there, and the common thread of depression, seems to be present in the majority of instances.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.