Suicide: 'Irish suicide rate one of highest in Europe'

UCDVet wrote: »

I was reading an article (I think it was in the IrishTimes) that was honestly suggesting we could cut down the number of suicides if we just made it harder for people to get a hold of 'dangerous' things.

I lol'd so hard.

There seems to be this attitude in Northern Western Europe (actually probably just UK and Ireland) that if you ban things the nasty stuff goes away.

At one point there were calls for bans on pointed kitchen knives in the UK.

I swear in twenty years the UK will have everyone wrapped in kevlar with CCTV cameras on head, chest and back just to make sure they keep you 'safe'.

The whole attitude to suicide and mental health in this country is beyond sad.

People need to educate themselves as to why this turns into the only options for some. Some people assume that if you say you are depressed you are just a bit down, its a pull yourself together attitude to a lot, which only compounds the feelings of someone who feels this way and leads him/her down darker paths.

I honestly think mental health issues should be covered in school. Children are educated not smoke as they will get cancer, eat healthy or they may get heart disease, speak up if you are bullied. But never is the subject of mental illness brought up.

My partner is Bipolar and I love him dearly, but when I see how difficult it is for him to access services it makes my so angry. Needless to say if he was wealthy if most likely would not be a problem to get good counselling , good Doctors , general decent care. But he is at the mercy of our Health Service and the amount of **** ups I have seen in the past few years in relation to someone with mental health issues is disgusting.



I spent a night a couple of weeks ago in a Dublin Hospital and watched him puke into bag after bag, while sitting in a chair, in A&E, he was in this chair for two days and two nights as there were no beds available. He was ignored by most of the Nurses as they were run off their feet and had a few derogatory remarks made to him as it was assumed he was a Junkie. He was there in relation to his illness, however it is personal so I won't go into it. Bottom line, he now has a long road ahead in getting access to services to help, and he is one of the willing ones. There are many who have no idea where to turn. Its a ****ing disgrace for a so called educated country. I don't have the answers, but one of them is understanding , compassion, being a good friend, sister, brother, mother, father. You might think someone in your life is fine, but take time to talk, let them know they are not alone. Too many backs are turned these days while people are busy with their own lives.

Bit of a rant, but am dissapointed with this country right now.

Well, we had to be best at something.

What sort of thing are other countries doing thats different?
What can our government do to prevent it?

serious questions, im not defending the government in any way i just want to know what actually can be done.
I say this as someone who has what i would consider to be pretty bad depression so im not trying to brush the matter under the rug.

I was talking to a friend about this earlier on. We started out with a general moan about finding something to do to get fit. Obviously, you can run around a park but this was more about the general attitude to health and fitness. To a lot of people fitness and health is goal that takes hard, boring work to achieve because "it's good for you." Being fit is the goal, not the natural result of having an enjoyable, happy life. You shouldn't be fit and healthy because it'll cause less misery for you, you should be fit and healthy because it's part of an enjoyable life and allows you to have more enjoyment from life. (This is sort if where all the fitness guru talk about lifestyle changes comes from.)

We then started talking about the suicide reports and the shockingly high level of suicides here. And one of the things that came up was Mens Sheds. I think most people will know a bit about them now, but they were an Aussie invention of having a community shed, where elderly men could get together and build stuff and fix things, form friendships and actually have people about who they could communicate with on their own level about their problems, be it mental or physical health, loneliness, whatever. (Although wiki says the Irish Mens Sheds are aimed at all ages and not just elderly men.)

Anyway, I've been on a researching kick about these types of community endeavours for the past few hours, posted on a few forums here about it and generally been looking at the legal situation of things. You can setup clubs in Ireland (I have no idea how, I can find very few mentions of it anywhere) but traditionally it was a method of getting booze outside of pub hours and then a way for sports clubs to have their own pub, and more recently they've become a way to allow gambling while there's no gambling legislation. And I find that a whole load of bollix.

In Sweden there's a huge amount of government funding. It would shock pretty much any Irish person to see how much money goes towards youth clubs. This is money that the kids and young adults get to decide how they spend themselves. It has to be for official youth club stuff, like equipment or training, or internet connections or rent for a premesis. But they get it by the bucketload, enough even for the bigger ones to own their own premises. And this pisses me off in two ways, first off there's not that level of support for youth clubs here. Secondly there's even less support for these kinds of things for the entire adult population.

In fairness, you have quite a few sports clubs. I just don't think that goes far enough. These Mens Sheds are showing there is a demand from "grown ups" for social outlets outside of sports and outside of boozing in pubs (both of which are hugely linked anyway.) Look at the recent Kerry County Council shambles, talking about people in rural areas losing their only social outlet of the pub. How fecking sad is that, that the only option they had for socialising was going to the pub. There should be way more than that for anyone (generally speaking.) And it shouldn't be a commercial endeavour for some business man to get rich off of or to pull the rug from under if it's only helping 50 people and not the 65 people he needs to make a profit.

There has long been support for sports clubs, and even that's drying up. However look at the most popular sport in the world, football. You have soccer clubs for people really interested. And you have kids playing games in their parks. Now you have regular 5/6/7 a-side leagues going. Now even with the most popular sport on the planet there isn't anything catering for the people who those options don't work for. My brother is in college, he doesn't have time for much team sports and can't commit to a 5 a-side league. He does however play the occasional social game. Himself and his friends and their friends get together when they can and rent a third of a pitch from the university, a pitch that's subsidised meaning they can afford it. Now think of the adults who are working regular jobs, or who are looking for work, don't have the money to rent a pitch (from a businessman out to make profit) don't have the ability to commit to a team or league because they're too busy or they're simply not interested in the level of commitment needed for it. Then there's the people who wouldn't know enough people to get a game going. Is there anywhere in the country that simply says, "have the pitch on Sunday afternoon, whoever turns up can play a game. If you get 30 people play 11 a side and make regular subs, if you get 5 people play 3 & in. This pitch will be there for you every Sunday whoever turns up." And that's just with soccer, what if they wanted to play basketball another week, handball another, tennis, badminton, etc. And that's only with sports aspect.

All of this, I believe comes back to the idea that people will be much better off, people will be healthier, happier and there will be far less suicides if there was more a sense of community and community involvement. Where people could show up to a pitch on a Sunday and find a game with anyone else interested, or people could get together to build and or get together to race rc cars, or knit, or play computer games, or shoot bows and arrows or even make bows and arrows. And most importantly they get to do it with other people without feeling like they're signing their every weekend away but can dip in and out of a community of engaged people.

And I don't mean the kind of bollocksology community of Tidy Towns where people do it to peek over neighbours fences, but a proper community where people share in activities, sports, arguments and debates and even just socialising. And the sad thing about all of this is that I know there's actually some (albeit minor) funding for this kind of thing. It's just that it's not well publicised because they'd run out of money in a flash, and it's targeted at "at-risk" groups. And to that I say bollocks. The entirety of Ireland is "at-risk" at the moment. There should be money being poured into resources and groups that instead of just talking about things and providing "information and advice services" actually does things that allows people to be happier in their life. And it shouldn't be at the mercy of an entrepreneur out to make money off people. At the least there should be an advisory body showing people what services, funding and support is available to them to build these community resources. And the sad thing about all of this is that pretty much the best example I can think of of one of these types of "communities" is Boards itself.

Lyaiera wrote: »

I was talking to a friend about this earlier on [...]

Don't usually see the need, but you could of probably used a TL;DR for this post.

I do think that isolation has become a big problem for many. Close communities are becoming less common, and those who are unable to find employment they often don't feel like they "belong" anywhere and lack even superficial company and communication. Young males is a group that has been hit hard by unemployment due to the collapse of the construction and related industries.

There is sites like meetup.com, and people living near colleges can often avail of club and societies.

orestes wrote: »

While I agree that social clubs and exercise would be very good resources for communities and for people who want to socialise, I don't think it would really address the underlying problems of suicide or prevent depression.

A lot of people who suffer from depression are very socially active and seemingly happy, successful, popular people. They are usually the life and soul of the party and noone would ever guess they are depressed, laughing on the outside and crying on the inside to use the old analogy.

I think that your idea would help people while they are being treated for depression, and help them with recovery, but unless people are comfortable getting help in the first place unfortunately I don't think it would make much of a difference. People who are suffering would be able to put on the mask and go through the social club and sports routine the same way they do with other social situations and nobody would know there was anything going on with them. The first priority should be creating awareness and understanding of mental health issues and making people feel comfortable seeking help, and then when they are getting well to engage in social situations like the things you suggest when they are comfortable of doing so genuinely, kinda like an emotional halfway house which I actually think would be pretty damned cool

I think that's part of the issue, and I genuinely think it's being done in a lot of areas. The awareness levels around depression have skyrocketed in the last ten years.

I probably didn't make the point well enough in my post, but I don't see investment in social facilities and health and sporting facilities as a means unto itself. Rather, like the Mens Sheds idea, it's an investment into communities and a better approach to a social involvement that allows people a space where they can unburden themselves in a setting where they feel comfortable. One of the principles of the Mens Shed idea is that supposedly "Men don't talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder." As in the communication is done in relation to something else. They appear to be fixing an engine, when in reality it's about unloading their issues to a receptive person who they can bond with over the engine.

I do think there needs to be far less stigmatisation of mental health issues. However the idea that depression is purely a "chemical imbalance" has been abandoned for a good few years now. A much more holistic approach to mental health is recommended. And no matter how much therapy or time with a doctor a person gets, if they feel isolated and alone there is very little a therapist and doctor can do for them if there isn't a community to be part of to get through the other 167 hours.

But yes, I think there needs to be work done on all aspects of this. I think this sort of society building and support has benefits that go way beyond just the raw suicide numbers and towards a happier and healthier society. There are huge amounts of people who are deeply unhappy at the moment without any form of depression, they're justifiably unhappy. I think society needs to address the entirety of itself and not just the extreme cases.

orestes wrote: »

While I agree that awareness of mental health issues in Ireland has moved forward in the last ten years, I definitely wouldn't say it has sky-rocketed. Guys sitting around and tinkering with engines or having a kick-about is fine for them to get stuff off their chests, but I honestly don't think it is suitable on it's own for the initial treatment of depression. Having stuff on your mind is not the same thing as suffering from a serious illness. The most successful treatment for depression, as shown by many many studies, is cognitive behavioural therapy and anti-depressants. As I said in my earlier post, I definitely think that the kind of thing you are talking about would be great, for people who are already being treated and in recovery.

I don't know where people have got the notion that people who kill themselves were suffering from depression. It may be technically correct with the new DSM which has pathologised many legitimate forms of sadness and sorrow but overall a lot of people who killed themselves could very well have been in desperate situations and not depressed at all.

Look at someone who is in their 60s, their wife has died, they live in rural area and all their kids have grown up and emigrated. Is that person "depressed?" Possibly. Do they have valid reasons for their depression? Absolutely. And no matter how many drugs you give someone or how much therapy (of which CBT is only the current method) they will always be in the situation where they're isolated and alone unless society changes. Similarly there's the person in their late forties with young kids who loses their semi-skilled, non-tech job. Where are they going to find another job? You can help someone be positive all you want but the reality is that they will find it extremely difficult to find a job anywhere near the same level they held previously.

What I'm trying to get across is that a lot of these problems aren't internal to a person. Even getting someone to readjust internally will not solve the problems a lot of people are facing.