Suicide - A National Emergency

Barry McColgan
Dermot Crowley Ógra Shinn Féin
West Tyrone

Suicide is the biggest killer of our young people in Ireland.

Hundreds of young people tragically take their own lives every year across Ireland, with hundreds more receiving emergency treatment after self harming and attempting to take their own life.

There is no community, no family, and no section of society that has not been touched or affected by Suicide.

Ireland has one of the worst incidences of suicide, with reported suicides rising by over 25% in the last 10 years. It is an issue, a national emergency that we all have a stake in trying to prevent.

Infact it is an international emergency, suicide has no borders, with the WHO (World Health Organisation) estimating that as many as 1 million people take their own life each and every year.

The tragedy, sense of grief and loss to the family and friends of someone bereaved through suicide is always felt more acute because of the tragic and preventable circumstances of the death, which is why we as a community, as a people must come together to do all that we can to ensure that more and more people’s lives are saved and that we are all better equipped to prevent someone from taking their own life.

Suicide prevention is everyone’s business, and it is something that we as young people should be particularly active on.



There are many things that each and everyone one of us can do to prevent suicide.

We can all participate in Suicide Prevention courses like ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) or PIPS (Public Initiative to Prevent Suicide), which equip you with the skills and know how, to spot the signs of someone contemplating taking their own life, and then being able to intervene and prevent it.

The more and more young people involving themselves in these courses, which only last 2 days for ASIST and 1 day for PIPS, then the more lives can be saved.

People should also host these courses in their local area, and open up these suicide prevention life saving skills to people in their own community.

This literally could make all the difference in saving someone’s life, and from organizing a number of these courses I know this to be true, that is the importance of providing such events.

We can request that our community and sporting groups, schools and colleges host these programmes so that the widest group of people are availing of these skills.

We can also lobby our councils to facilitate ongoing suicide prevention schemes and courses so that the widest possible net is cast in promoting these essential life saving suicide prevention skills.

And we can raise awareness through leaflets, engagements with young people, and by painting murals like the suicide prevention wall in Beechmount Avenue, West Belfast. Suicide needs to be de-stigmatised, and awareness raising is key to this.

While suicide is an issue that needs to be addressed at a ground and community level, government has a huge responsibility in supporting, endorsing and resourcing these efforts, and need to do all that they can in preventing suicide.

Ógra Shinn Féin have been active in demanding an effective all – Ireland suicide prevention strategy. We want to see a national strategy that will promote an integrated, fully resourced, and holistic prevention strategy across all 32 counties of our country, so that these tragic and preventable deaths become less common and hopefully a thing of the past.

Get active on Suicide Prevention today; you could literally save a life!

http://www.nosp.ie/html/training.html

http://www.pipsproject.com/

(Ógra Shinn Féin activists engage in PIPS project Suicide Prevention Course, Nov '09)