Sir, - It was sad to read the letter from Rev Peter O'Callaghan (March 8th). One can only hope that a more senior spokesman for the Church will reassure us that this is not the official attitude to suicide, particularly the male suicides highlighted by John Waters in recent times.
As someone who had close personal contact with two male suicide attempts, one fortuitously averted, I can say that so-called violent male energy had no part to play whatsoever. Far from having a violent mentality, both persons could be described as being the epitome of kind-hearted, easy-going and good-humoured people. One of them was deeply religious and maintained close contact with his confessor to the end.
Both cases occurred after the breakdown of a close personal relationship, which in turn followed the previous breakdown of earlier relationships. The person becomes seized with a deep despair that the forming of a close relationship /friendship is, for some reason which he cannot comprehend, something that will forever be denied to him. The situation is compounded for men by an inability to communicate the nature of one's problem and the depth of one's despair to anyone.
It is this sense of absolute desolation that triggers the mental malfunction and eventually causes the suicide attempt. It is a strange feature that this malfunction can go largely unnoticed in the male at an external level.
Nowadays it is increasingly believed that various factors such as child abuse, corporal punishment and a general lack of unselfish love in childhood contribute to this susceptibility to the eventual mental malfunction.
I hope that John Waters will continue his attempts to draw attention to the problem of male suicide and the closely related question of the law's maladroit, inhumane treatment of the male partner in family breakdown. - Yours, etc., John Murphy,
Milltown, Dublin 6.