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ACTOR AND COMEDIAN PJ Gallagher has opened up about his experience with mental illness, including his time spent in hospital last year.
Speaking on The Late Late Show last night, Gallagher said he “started having a depressive episode pretty much this time last year”, when he experienced “overwhelming anxiety that kept building and building and building.
“I really didn’t want to live anymore … It was just this overwhelming feeling that I was in the way, that it was making life harder on everyone around me and I was failing at everything.”
Gallagher, who was cohosting the Morning Glory show on Radio Nova at the time, said he resisted going to hospital for some time, but described his experience as a patient as “brilliant”.
“The first week was really, really tough, because I was still a danger to myself,” he said, recalling how he initially didn’t want to leave his room on the ward.
“The only safe place in the whole world was this tiny little room.”
“And then I got to a stage where I was having the craic. I was playing bingo. And winning!”
‘You need people to fight for you’
When asked by host Ryan Tubridy about what advice he would give to people in distress, Gallagher reflected on “all this talk of mental health.”
“It’s great – talk to people – but nobody talks about ‘mentally ill’.
“I don’t need to talk. I need 24 hour around-the-clock care.”
He paid tribute to his friend, writer and actress Stephanie Preissner, who he said “literally saved my life.”
“I was so lucky. I did have people fighting for me.”
‘The whole pub knew’
Gallagher drew laughs from the live audience when he recalled discovering that people knew he had been in the hospital.
“I never thought I’d ever tell anyone about it … I went down to the pub last week and said ‘I’m on the Late Late next week, and I just want you to know that I was in hospital for a couple weeks’. And they went ‘Oh, yeah, we know, yeah.
“I was like, well, why didn’t you say something? … the whole pub knew!’
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Had not realised they had not yet provided a replacement mobility allowance for those who require it. Typical government not important as there are no votes in it…..
When it comes to the golden circle the wheels of government can spin very fast…when its the most vulnerable they barely turn at all.
Wonder will they change when they get a spanking on may 23..
Yet Water tax legislation sailed through in record time………………makes you wonder about priorities doesnt it?
It is a pity they would not cut their own mobility allowance as in travel claims just to attend the Dail, their place of work!
Government policy. The weak, the needy and feeble are shoved aside, and put at the back of the Q. Don’t forget the feeble minded weaklings who pretend to govern us subscribe to the Darwinian ethic of, ‘Only the strong survive’. In their world that means only the greedy and their corrupt underlings survive. We can be strong in ways that they will never know about. God Bless you all. Get up now and walk the walk and talk the talk.
Govts do not do planning or forward thinking. That would entail utilising brain cells. Totally alien concept to the powers that be!!!
Disgraceful Gov. has not catered for people with disabilities. Should it really matter if a person was diagnosed with a disability in the last few months as opposited to 13 months ago.
Gov Policy = Ageism and discrimination at its best.
unless they get told by the mafia bosses in brussels or the troika/IMF or the banks these lot in power couldn’t run a decent piss up on st paddys day
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