Awareness campaign: In the past four years three families within a few miles of the small Co Leitrim village, Dromohair, lost family members to suicide.
Cáit Wallace and Mary T. McGovern lost their 27-year-old brother, Pat Kerins, to suicide in November 2000.
In January last year Leitrim county councillor John McTernan and his wife Mary were bereaved by the suicide of their eldest child and only son, Garry, just two days after his 24th birthday.
Five months later 26-year-old Kevin Fallon killed himself, leaving his parents, Sean and Carmel Fallon, bereaved.
They are just three of thousands of families in Ireland whose loved ones have died by suicide. In 2004 alone, 444 people (mainly young men) took their own lives.
Personal grief combined with a realisation that there is no national awareness programme about suicide prompted the Leitrim families to form Suicide Teach Organise Prevent (STOP), said Mrs McTernan, who is secretary of the group.
"Last year 336 people died of road accidents and there are huge campaigns regarding drink driving and speeding, and rightly so, but suicide remains hidden," she said.
"There were at least nine suicides in Co Leitrim since 2004, but if there were nine road traffic accidents there would be a public outcry."
Just 6 per cent of the national health budget goes to tackling suicide, reflecting a continuing culture of "putting away" suicide and failing to bring its reality out into the open, said Mrs McTernan, a retired community psychiatric nurse.
She believes suicide awareness programmes must be put in place to help health boards, teachers, youth workers and parents prevent young people taking their lives.
"It must start in secondary schools so that teachers can be trained in being able to recognise behavioural changes," she said.
It is also essential that psychiatric assessment is offered to those who attempt suicide. Currently this service is not automatically available, even though 10,000 people attempted suicide in 2003.
"It is of paramount importance that referral and aftercare is provided to these people," said Mrs McTernan.
In an effort to raise awareness and to tackle the high incidence of suicide, particularly among 18-27 year-old men, the group has organised a STOP Suicide conference in the Abbey Manor Hotel, Dromohair, Co Leitrim, this Friday and Saturday.
It is aimed at a broad spectrum of people including agencies, professionals, bereaved families and youth, according to Mrs McTernan, and will be opened by RTÉ northern editor, Tommy Gorman, who has family living in Dromohair.
Guest speakers on Friday evening are Rev Dr Tony Byrne and Sr Kathleen Maguire, who together run courses entitled "Facing up to suicide" which provide a means of discussing the many issues, unresolved grieving and emotions around suicide.
Last year, just four or five months after her son Garry died, Mrs McTernan said a bereavement session by Rev Dr Byrne and Sr Maguire was helpful, providing "some little comfort".
Saturday's speakers include Gareth O'Callaghan, 2FM presenter and author of A Day Called Hope: A Personal Journey Beyond Depression; Aggie Boylan, a psychiatric nurse and suicide researcher; Patricia Hannon, a bereavement councillor; and Dr John Connolly, consultant psychiatrist in Castlebar, Co Mayo and secretary of the Irish Association of Suicidology.
Mary Hutchinson from Coleraine, who works in social policy and was bereaved by suicide, will also speak, as well as Michael Egan, a retired Garda Sergeant and member of the Tipperary-based Living Links support group.
STOP is also in contact with the Let's Get Together support group in Cork and Teenline in Tallaght, Dublin.
After this weekend STOP hopes to set up a suicide support group in Co Leitrim, with the possibility of subsequently organising a national group. There had been huge interest in the conference from all over Ireland, said Mrs McTernan.
It is being funded by money raised by Siobhán Hopper and Dave Dolan, young friends of Garry McTernan, the North Western Health Board (now part of the Health Service Executive) and Wyeth Medica Ltd. The conference fee is €150 but bereaved families can make an optional donation upon registration.
For further information phone: 071-9164286
or e-mail: stopsuicide@eircom.net