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SPEAKING ABOUT SUICIDE prevention in Ireland, Kathleen Lynch said it’s estimated that one in every 100 people in the country is trained in either Safe Talk or ASIST.
The Minister of State at the Department of Health was speaking on Morning Ireland today to mark Suicide Awareness Day.
Safe Talk and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) are suicide prevention training programmes.
The Labour TD commented that, “There is an area around undetermined deaths – where we may suspect suicide but there is no evidence and we have to be careful about that.”
When asked if suicide was underreported as a result of these incidents, she said:
“I’m not sure it’s underreported. I think there are difficulties – the CSO records the data in relation to suicide and then they confirm their information with the coroners office and the gardai.
When there is an obvious indication that someone has taken their own life by suicide then it is very clearly reported.
“If someone sits into a car and before they sit in they tell someone they are going to do this – then that will be taken into consideration but that very seldom happens.
“In fact I don’t know any case where that happened. We have to be careful about putting these cases into our statistics.”
Funding
Lynch said that the budget for suicide prevention has doubled to over €8 million but added that there is still a lot to do.
“When people self harm and arrive at emergency departments – we need to have people in there as well, we have 22 in place we need 37.”
When questioned about suicide prevention funding compared to funding to prevent road deaths, Lynch said they weren’t comparable:
“Road safety is entirely different, you can legislate for it, you can improve the roads, if someone drives recklessly you can take their licence. It’s entirely different and the response needs to be entirely different.
“The Road Safety Authority is self funded through the type of sanctions that are opposed on drivers.
“This is a more sensitive issue and a less obvious issue. In lots of suicide cases there is no indication- it’s about a holistic approach, a society approach.”
Helplines
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I like Kathleen. Personally, I think she is warm and empathetic. But this is stupid. This is her and her government trying to conceal what’s really going on. So many of us know verdicts of ‘death by misadventure’ in what we know clearly to be suicide.
This statement from her angers me. So many charities and groups are trying to remove the stigma and mysteries surrounding mental health and suicide and to me, she is sweeping it back under the rug.
Spot on. Although how can we still have a stigma associated with suicide – at that point the poor person is dead! A stigma attached to the manner in which someone dies, some people really do have little to be worrying about.
Cop on Kathleen , get in line MISADVENTURE is NOT SUICIDE
Fully agree with you.
Anytime I hear from this lassie on issues of mental health,I think of John Mc Carthy .. I’d imagine if he was alive today, he would see her as another spoofer .
Yes John had a very honest approach to the area of mental health which is not the approach that most people in Ireland have to it including our politicians.
Here is a thought start labeling things for what they are and in difficult cases say maybe that the person was suspected of committing suicide? There are hundreds if not thousands of people that choose to end their own lives each year because of social and economic issues caused by the treatment of people in the workplace, family, soical welfare, government etc. The government does not want to highlight this because it would force them into doing something about it and real change costs money. If somebody shows the clear signs of suicide in this country when found, the figures can be greatly distorted because of empathy for the family. There is a stigma there that needs to be broken and in the mean time the government has a duty to be unbiased and collect the figures across a range of issues and leave them tamper free. And ultimately stop making pitiful excuses and get the finger out!!
Sounds like Kathleen is getting the excuses in nice and early.
The mental health services are totally under funded. This gov has continually cut staff from the services yet this air head comes out with assist etc which are great but a cheap cover up of their depleting of services tactics. Home base treatment was v. Helpful to those who were afaird 2 attend because of stigma but that effectively gone
This woman is some bimbo
She has a colorful history prior to being a minister. One would have thought you needed to be squeaky clean to represent people.. That is all I will say….
She needs to look in a mirror, yes politicians are responsible for a higher suicide rate. Ask Bertie.
512 last year that figure is more than 1 for each TD in the Dail on any normal day. Kathleen I hold you responsible for 1 the question is which 1? You make the laws that create our society and you are responsible for despair, stress, hunger, homelessness, unemployment,poor health services etc, yes Kathleen you applied for the job, you lied to get elected and now you are preparing for the next election by lying again. You are responsible for another person about to take their lives today, tomorrow or the next day. That is your job to prevent it. Suicide has gone up while under your watch. Road deaths have gone down. It’s no coincidence.
What do you specifically want her to do different? You can’t make a law to make suicide go away
The government spend millions on the traffic gardai,
8 million on suicide is merely lip service to a huge problem
We tackled the road deaths largely down to pressure from the insurance industry
It’s a proven sociological phenomenon that any society undergoing major change, for good and bad, brings a higher suicide rate as the social bonds get stretched to the limit. Ireland has had both extremes in very close proximity in the last 15 years, regardless of what govt we’ve had.
Road deaths (which contrary to the posts here have started going back up, since this year) are a far simpler problem to deal with.
I also think some of you are not really considering how hostile a parent or friend of someone who has killed themselves can be when the suggestion of suicide is put to them, many refuse to believe it and are more comforted by the thought of accident or murder than the thought of a loved one being in such pain they killed themselves (since confronting that pain makes them, usually wrongly, think they could have done something)
Our mental health services are an utter disgrace, and private care is out of the price range of most people, we ought to have an NHS type system with mental health included.
There also are not a lot of great private options. As someone who was in this situation in the past I found the whole ‘listen but don’t advise’ practice of helplines to be extremely infuriating, I wanted to fix things not just endlessly discuss them, I think people need practical solutions and proper treatment/ therapy rather than to just blow off steam, the worst thing that can happen with depression is that the person can drift and seem to get nowhere, then that leads to them thinking theres no light at the end of the tunnel, and once someone looses hope in a resoloution that’s when the thoughts of suicide come in
In several colleges they used to have a proper free mental health service with their GP service but due to govt cuts colleges have had to introduce fees for them. The very group likely to encounter trouble adjusting to university life, the ones who didn’t come from private schools and bring half their mates with them, are thus the ones priced out of the service.
Completely agree about the helplines. It is infuriating to be in a state of absolute crisis and be referred to the Samaritans (I’m not downing them, they do great work). Just talking isn’t problem solving. Structural therapy, Dbt, Cbt, solution focused, schema therapy are types of things that need to be made available publicly for those suffocating with debilitating mental ill health.
I’m not saying they don’t play a role, there ARE times when you JUST need to blow off steam, definitly, or just want to talk things out. Many therapists will just let their client talk and come to their own answers or help guide them to them, I’m not saying they should start telling people what to do in the sense of ”no you’re handling that wrong, do this instead” but maybe ”have you considered xyz?”, ”what happened when you tried xyz?”. Helping guide them to their own solutions by making them think about it in ways they might not be.
For me it was all soloutions soloutions soloutions. I had absolutely zero interest in letting this thing linger on for years and define me. I came up with a plan, a specific plan with achievable measurable goals to change the things that were causing me upset and that plan was my salvation, I knew ok just stick to the plan and you’ll get through this, I think that’s far more constructive.
This clown doesn’t know what she is talking about. Best ignored I say. Her government and past governments have done sweet f all in the area of mental health except push the problem down the road.
Treat the people that turn up to E D properly n immediately then instead of send in them home with few tablets. Some dem end up dead. This is a fact
Question to Minister Lynch: who paid for your transfer from Letterkenny hospital too CUT some time ago.
In 2012, 162 persons died on Irish roads and the Road Safety Authority spent €41m on road safety. Now with a death rate by suicide close to 500 persons Minister Lynch can boast €8m is being spent on suicide prevention and that figure has doubled over the past number of years.
If the Government were to give the same priority to suicide prevention as is given to road safety approx. €125m would have to be spent on suicide prevention. That’s a long way from the €8m currently being spent.
These figures starkly highlights the Government priority given to road safety and the third world status given to suicide prevention and mental health services in general.
If the issue was not so serious and tragic it could be considered a Irish joke and Minister Lynch the court jester.
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