Connecting for Life’ – Ireland’s Suicide Prevention Strategy 2015-2020

When we planned this strategy- this launch- we could hardly have anticipated that in the preceding Misdsummer days and the Pacific nights we would be given a masterclass in exactly what it might mean and how it should be done.

In the week we bury our young, our beautiful dead, it was connecting, -connecting for life – that kept first friends then families communities a country.

Connecting for life, signalling our desire, our capacity, our will, to be a light in the dark.

Functioning as a defier, a belier, and a destroyer of Death.

Because it is in that life connection. It is in the memory made and shared and minded.

That the beloved and love itself dwell now and will live on.

With this strategy, Ireland is working- to mind life and lives and to destroy death by suicide.

I believe it is a mark of our society and of the human condition that across so much of the developed world too many want nothing more from their life than to leave it.

That in our headlong rush to become someone, something, ’a success.

We forget to know or to mind who we are.

But to tackle suicide and what can lead to it we cannot rely on the lessons of ‘events’ on the wisdom inflicted by casual cruelty.

To tackle suicide we need a national strategy, a national plan.

For the government this strategy is not just an opportunity – it is duty.

That is why despite the financial crisis and subsequent financial constraints mental health was and remains a political priority.

It’s a key area where we’ve made sure to ring-fence funding.

This strategy involves the whole of the government and the whole of society so by working together our public policy will improve and enrich the private experience of our people.

Yes it’s a bold policy.

The WHO says we’re leading in our ambitions for it which is to reduce suicide and self-harm by 10 per cent over the next five years.

In this target we’re following the example of other countries.

But in our case we’re working not just across the whole population but crucially in those particularly vulnerable groups such as our young people, our men in middle age and on people at the transition points in life that make them vulnerable

When we’re grieving over a death or the loss of a relationship.

When we lose a job

Or leave school early

Or experience stress at work or in the classroom.

Connect for Life sets out to strengthen the service and the quality-of-service…. at these critical junctures.
But equal, it sets out to strengthen the social ties that bind.

It does because,as you know, we do not live our lives in isolation.

Because we dwell always in the shelter or the shadow of each other.

Because in all our lives at some point we will either depend on the kindness of family friends strangers.

Or we will be the givers of that kindness.

Just by being there for a friend, a neighbour, who finds that, you know, they just can’t do it themselves at least, we can keep life itself.

Our connection becoming their connection to a life a future that even for a few minutes might be that bit more bearable.

A life, a future that otherwise might not even exist.

And none of this requires gargantuan efforts.

Instead it’s about the little things as Gary Seery can and will attest.

In the office – come out for a coffee.

A simple- is everything Ok?

To your neighbour- I brought over a few scones, stick on the kettle.

At school – you’re great at French fair good man – or – would you like a hand with that ?

At home – what’s up -how are you getting on?

And it’s the same in our own lives.

Because when it comes to uncertainty, anxiety, grief, disappointment, fear, sadness

We are none of us untouchable. We are none of us immune.

And what’s our own personal strategy?

In our rush to do, have we forgotten how to be?

Literally, how do ‘mind’ ourselves?

How do we protect our happiness?

Something that’s destroying happiness for too many is the phenomenon of cyber-bullying.

I’ve spoken often about our young people and how they live in a very difficult world to the one I grew up in. It’s a virtual world where this ‘bit of fun’, this ‘virtual’ torture, kills real people in real life.

Often for our children cyberbullying turns the sanctuary of home into a virtual arena a public pit devoid of cover, humanity, mercy.

Where the virtual mob, – one voice – is deafening.

Where the thumbs are down, no ‘likes’ at all.

At school, internet safety and awareness is key, changing behaviour and raising the knowledge, coping skills and increasing self confidence.
But as parents, family, friends and strangers, it’s up to all of us to convince our young people they are already of immeasurable value to us because they simply exist. Their sheer presence will always be enough for us.
For many years, Ireland too needed saving from itself in its harsh and uninformed attitudes to mental health and psychological wellbeing.

We recognised the pain, the wound behind the plaster cast, the stitches, the sling.

We were unaware or maybe avoiding of those in need of an invisible mend.

But as a country, a society, we have come an enormous way.

Making huge strides in breaking the silence

In making ourselves aware of the magnificence and the fragility of what it means and what it takes to be human.

Thanks to people like Conor Cusack, Marian Keyes, Bressie, more of us know it’s ok not to feel ok.

Thousands walk from Darkness into Light for Pieta House.

Thousands more contact online sources of help.

Showing that if people have the chance more will come out and show they care.

If they need help more of them will reach out.

The increased contact with groups such as Bodywhys proves the old-stigma attached to mental health is receding.

I have to mention my colleague, my friend, Dan Neville who put mental wellbeing on the public agenda at a time when people were still terrified of being ‘outed’ because of ‘their nerves’.

Or because they felt constantly sad though they had everything to live for.

Or because their adored son or daughter or mother or father had died by suicide.

He sat in kitchens and community centres and his own clinics….and heard over and over the soul-destroying question – Why?

Dan Neville put suicide not alone to public attention but to the heart of political and public policy as proven in this strategy today.

Through the centuries, particularly in times of crisis, it’s our heart, the care we have for each other, the love we show to each other, have defined us, sustained us, as a nation.

We call it Duthracht,

Today I’m asking all of you here to be the Keepers of that Duthracht and to encourage people to Connect for life.

I believe that as individuals and as a society, we need to get to know and love our alone time, our private time, our silence.

It might be the most important, lifesaving conversation we can have with ourselves.

In the meantime, today I’m asking everyone here to ask everyone you know to take part and play their part.

Live your life.

Connect for Life.