Figures from sports and arts to help end stigma of suicide

WELL-KNOWN figures from sports, arts, media and politics who have suffered from a mental illness will be asked to promote the Government’s mental health strategy and to end the stigma of such illness.

Minister of State for mental health John Moloney said it was critical for the stigma of mental illness to be addressed if the number of suicides were to fall.

He said he was inspired by the example of the former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik who left office for three weeks to deal with a depressive episode during his premiership and returned to work afterwards. He also won a second term as prime minister.

He said the people involved in promoting the strategy would be announced in January as part of a campaign that would also review the progress of the Government’s Vision for Change mental health strategy, which is three years old.

“We are going to work with people to eliminate the stigma attached to suicide. We want to highlight that mental illness is just another illness and it is no more than that and people can resume a normal life afterwards,” he said.

Mr Moloney was one of the guests at a conference held by the Office of the Press Ombudsman in Portlaoise on Wednesday night.

The office this week issued a document about the reporting of suicide with a view to issuing guidelines because of well-established international evidence which found that the reporting of suicides can lead to copycat suicides.

Connacht Tribune managing editor Dave O’Connell said his newspaper had a policy of not publishing the name of a person who had taken their life, even after an inquest. He said the overwhelming reason for not publishing names was that journalists from local newspapers tended to live in the community they wrote about.

He also said the media “tend to get tarred with the same brush” in relation to the coverage of suicide.

He cited the example of a Galway student who left a suicide note on his Bebo website. He said his initial instinct was to ignore the story out of deference to the family, but a local freesheet had published it and it was followed up by a national newspaper.

He said his newspaper was the subject of complaints when it decided to cover the story after it entered the public domain, although it strove to comply with recognised guidelines about reporting suicide.

“That showed me that the delegation who came to me had not differentiated between the stances taken by our newspaper and that taken by other newspapers. Those who met me had an understandable level of confusion at a time of grief.”

A woman who works in the north inner city of Dublin said there was an under-reporting of suicide in urban areas compared to rural areas. “It should be reported. There are whole communities that have issues that are not being addressed,” she said.

Another woman recommended that any report about suicide should be accompanied by a helpline. “If you are that depressed, you want instant access to a phone line and the press should take that on board,” she said.

A man, who said his wife had threatened to take her own life, said the one thing that stopped her was the thought of what effect it would have on her elderly mother. “I used to think it was a selfish act, but it wasn’t. It is just that they have to end the pain,” he said.

He said her cousin had been the latest of a spate of suicides in Wales. “It was splashed over every front page about her and her child.” He suggested that a suicide helpline should be as memorable as 999. “I can’t think of a bigger emergency,” he said.