Aisling Curtis | Senior Staff Writer
The 10th of September, World Suicide Prevention Day, passed without a single ice-bucket of awareness. Understandably, nobody likes to think that their loved ones may someday not be here; that they will have to know the psychological torture they struggled under, that they will be the ones left behind to shoulder the burden all alone. Nobody likes being left behind in the aftermath of a natural disaster, a psychological tsunami of disordered thinking that leads those we love down a dark path that we cannot – or, at least, should not – follow.
Like so many mental disorders, suicide is bogged down in a mess of misunderstanding, something that makes it incredibly difficult for those who desperately need help. As terrifying as it is to discuss the idea that the people we care about might want to die, we must learn to make suicide a part of the conversation. The government must stop cutting funds towards mental health. These services are not a negotiation. No matter what dire straits the economy is in, no desperate victim should have to listen to the dial tone on a help phone because the service is so terribly overrun.
When it comes to suicide, it’s so tempting to put your head back under that rock, into the warmth of incomprehension, into pretending that it’s not something that could happen to someone you know. When somebody is mangled in a physical event, the evidence of their destruction is written on their bodies and their skin – written in burns and broken bones and the slow, shaky progress towards rehabilitation, accompanied by regression and incapacity and progress and the myriad other steps that healing demands. Our own psychological inscrutability is what lets us down. We only know our own minds; so for those of us who have never suffered from mental illness it can be impossible to truly envision the extent of the suffering family or friends may undergo. The agony of a snapped bone can be assumed, even if you’ve never broken a bone yourself. The agony of psychological disturbance is harder to comprehend.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand: as an onlooker, it can be near impossible to believe that somebody will really carry through with it. But Ireland has the highest rate of suicide in Europe for young women, and the second highest for young men, according to a report by the European Child Safety Alliance in 2014. And, chillingly, this country has no national strategy for the prevention of suicide, a political disregard that is akin to our elected representatives putting their hands over their ears. I’ve seen firsthand the sickening portrayal by some of the national media when suicide occurs; the dogged misdiagnosis of serious mental disorder by seasoned professionals, as if in an attempt to pretend it doesn’t exist; the hard and heartbreaking slog of those attempting to keep their friends and family safe. In Ireland, where do you turn? To the professionals, when there are few structures in place and only 20 million was allocated to the provision of services in 2014? To their friends or family, few of whom have received substantial education about handling suicide, and can often – through no fault of their own – stigmatise the sufferer even more?
I don’t know. The answers are not in place for us yet. As young people, it’s our friends and peers who are appearing on these statistics, or who might one day appear if the proper care can’t be found. As young people we are best placed to learn about mental illness and its symptoms, to start talking about suicide, to shuck the stereotypes that have been placed upon sufferers and create a culture where mental illness is as acceptable as physical injury or disease.
Our political structures haven’t helped us; it’s time we help ourselves instead.
