Suicide in a modern Ireland

I currently volunteer with an organisation that deals with depression and helping people who find themselves struggling with the pressures of life in general. Mental health in Ireland has often been seen as a taboo and suicide even in modern Ireland is a faux pas, that still harbours the stigma of days gone by.

Reading the newspaper the other day, I was startled to read so clearly in black and white the instances of suicide in Ireland. Men appear to be those more affected and the so called Celtic Tiger and the bust of the greatest little economy that never really was and financial doom seem to be more common reasons for it.

What does a 50 year old man, who has no doubt been working for 30 years, has lived and survived the 1980's era of dull monotony and mass immigration, have to fear from the current economic downturn? How is it that this man, who has shown his fighting spirit and resistance, is now the victim of suicide?

The answer is perhaps that while the banks in modern Ireland in cahoots with the property developers and the flawed government were allowing for property prices to peak beyond any normal person's means; the 50 year old's of Ireland, were remortgaging their homes in order to provide a guarantee for their children's properties. Now those same children are leaving Ireland in their droves and being left behind are their parents and their properties.

Is it any wonder the people older generations of the country are taking their lives, feeling the sense of failure and sheer bewilderment, while those in the elite class and the government retain their spoils of boom time.

As a young woman, born at the start of the '80's exodus, educated during the so called boom and now jobless and penniless in the aftermath of excess, I can understand why these men especially, the father's of our modern Ireland are committing suicide. We need to urge the government to pressure the banks to relief the stress and sense of futility, so that the grandfather's of my friends children will be alive to see them grown up.