A chara, - A report by Kitty Holland (The Irish Times, November 23rd) informs us that the most recent report on suicide in this State finds that there is still a disproportionate number of men - usually young men - dying by their own hand.
The report's author, Dr Declan Bedford, advocates that men must have better access to psychiatric services. This reasoning is a product of the dominant view that the choice of suicide is the final tragic chapter in an episode of mental illness.
I was reminded of Dr Terry Lynch's view that the view of suicide as a result of mental illness was flawed. In Dr Lynch's view, expressed in his book Beyond Prozac: Healing Mental Suffering Without Drugs, the person who commits suicide is often taking a rational decision to leave an intolerable situation.
This is uncomfortable for the rest of us. Much better that we say the person is deluded, ill, mad, and leave it to the medics. The medical model gets society off the hook and dovetails with some powerful vested interests - the psychiatric profession and its patrons in the pharmaceutical companies.
If Dr Lynch is correct and these young men are taking the rational decision to leave this society in increasing numbers, perhaps is time to ask, not "what is wrong with these young men?", but "what is wrong with this society that they wish to leave it?"
One interesting observation from Dr Bedford's report was highlighted by Kitty Holland - and it deserves repetition and comment. He said the health services had become "very woman-orientated". Perhaps this is an example of power being held by men but being exercised on behalf of women.
Has this happened to the extent where health services, run by men, are causing men at large to exclude themselves? Organisations such as health boards are merely enforcers of dominant social policy ideas.
These ideas are also causing increasing numbers of our young men to self-exclude from this misandrist society in the most final and tragic way. Suicide is the escape hatch from a hostile society that screams hysterically at these young men that they are worthless.
When will we listen to them? This is not a job for psychiatrists and drugs or even health board co-ordinators, but for all of us. - Is mise,
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.