Ireland and suicide

While those are all potentially bad things I would be hesitant to over state them either. For example moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy has not been shown to be a bad thing by default.

Unfortunately a lot of the science literature on the subject is quite misleading to the general public. There are a few uses of language that are common which sound bad when they are not.

One sentence you will hear often for example is something like "There is no safe level of alcohol for consumption during pregnancy".

That sentence sound to the lay person like drinking any alcohol is unsafe. But that is not what it says. What they are essentially saying is "We have found no reason to think low moderate use is unsafe - but not finding evidence it is harmful does not mean it is not harmful - because there is no claims to certainty in science".

Basically they are being safe because there are many things we do not know. So it is safer to say the obvious - which is that the only dosage shown to be 100% safe is of course none. But you could say that about anything really.

In general though - if you see a pregnant woman with a nice big glass of wine in her hand of a Saturday night - we have pretty much zero cause for concern or judgement. It's likely perfectly fine and is seemingly unlikely to be causing the fetus/baby a shred of harm. If you see her falling around the place on a regular basis though - concern would certainly be warranted.

Worse is that punitive policies and judgements of women who drink at all during pregnancy seems to correlate with higher drinking rates during pregnancy. Which does seem counter intuitive and certainly counter productive.

What we hear most in regards to suicide is the deaths. Men are more likely to complete a suicide attempt, due to the means selected. Women attempt suicide at a higher rate. I think it's unhelpful when we focus too much on men and women as such. It can seem that the attempt isn't given the attention it needs and an attempt has been seen as attention seeking or manipulative by women in the past. The thing is we all suffer. We have a suffering problem, we need more spaces where a person can go and speak where they are just listened. In Australia there is a fantastic initiative called Just Listening, where the person who is suffering is treated with such dignity and truly listened to. The sad part here, is that many are dying by suicide and many others are after having an attempt and not getting the support they need afterwards. We can never take the stigma away from mental health, by once seeing a person as suffering with their mental health they have become stigmatised.

Suicide has always been some people's solution to end their suffering, only before because suicide was seen as a sin even it wasn't revealed.

It is still difficult for the family as there are judgements implied that the family could have done more.

Initiatives like Darkness into Light will not ease any rates of self harm it will provide funding to the organisation though.

Besides covid our society has become more competitive and indivualistic.

Within mental health treatment addictions tend to be tackled first. Personally I think similar to yourself. It must be a two pronged approach. For example its no good tackling a person's diet and tendency to binge without also looking at the underlying reasons. And I guarantee you that there are always underlying reasons.

Women get together and do the organising and awareness-creating when it comes to women's health issues. Therefore it would make sense for men to get together and do the organising and awareness-creating when it comes to men's health issues. And men do. But unfortunately there is also a contingent among men who just whinge about things not being done, instead of... doing something themselves (shur that's for someone else to do) and how women have it better. Blissfully oblivious to the irony of them doing nothing and moaning about nothing being done.

If you feel down because of e.g. Covid, exercise and healthy eating are great, but if you actually have clinical depression or anxiety, it's a struggle to get up, never mind commit to an exercise regime.

When you're being treated though and hopefully starting to feel better, exercise is great then.