Health is Wealth programme 19 - 10sept2024

The Health Floss on Connemara Community Radio. A weekly program supported by funding from Commissioner Lamont with the television license fee. Oh Doctor, I'm in trouble. Well, goodness gracious me. For every time a certain man is standing next to me, a flush comes to my face and my pulse begins to race. It goes boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, boom, boom. Boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom, bodee, boom. Well, goodness gracious me. I'm Marion Harriot. I'm going to start right away with one that's not a cheerful topic, I have to be honest. World Suicide Prevention Day. Communities around the world will all be coming together to raise awareness about working together to create a world where fewer people die by suicide. And I'm sure that's something we would all like to see. So I'm delighted to have on the line with me, Mary Nee, who is the Assistant Director of the Samaritans in Galway. So first of all, Mary, you're very, very welcome to Connemara Community Radio. Thanks very much, Marion, and thanks for having me on. And it's where organisations come together to help raise awareness and to try and take some meaningful steps towards helping to prevent suicide and supporting those who are struggling to cope. Which, of course, is exactly what Samaritans have been doing for, well, I know it's 47 years ago in Galway, and it's longer than that in other places, I presume. Yeah, I think it's 60 years in Galway, over 60 years. So just to put it in context, Samaritans, we offer a free telephone number, a helpline, which is 116123. And that's free from a mobile, from a landline, from anything. We also have an email service, which is joe, j-o, at samaritans.ie. And in the Samaritan context, every 61 seconds, somebody contacts Samaritans for support. And in the Galway branch, last year, we had 31,000 contacts. And that's just in our little branch in 14 Nuns Island. We have a 24-hour-a-day service, and it's 365 days a year. And all the branches come together, and it's collated to make sure that enough volunteers are on, you know, to answer the calls. And we're always recruiting and looking for volunteers. And if anyone is interested after listening to me, you can just go on to samaritans.ie, and you'll get information there about how to volunteer. Well, that was something I actually wanted to talk to you about in a bit of depth, because obviously the volunteers are extremely important to you. In fact, I'm reading here in the press release that you don't have any paid staff in Galway. It's all voluntary. All voluntary, yeah. And we've got 120 volunteers in Galway. And most of the branches are run completely voluntarily. We have 14 in the region of Ireland, not counting Northern Ireland, which kind of works with the UK system. So we're constantly recruiting, and we have two, you know, training sessions twice a year, sometimes maybe even one more in between. So there's more of a demand and more and more of a demand on our service. So that's why we constantly have to look for people to volunteer. And there's always two of us. We take our calls in Nans Island, and we do a three-hour duty every week. If somebody wanted to volunteer, they would have to go into Nans Island in Galway. Yes, or across the bar. Oh, or across the bar. Okay, but it's not like they can sort of do it from their own home. No, no, we don't. No, they have to be in the centre. Yeah. We have three in the centre. There's always two people, so we can support each other. There's a very good system of support for our volunteers. Training is very good. Initially, there's 30 hours of training, which is a mixture of in-person and online. Then you have mentoring for six weeks with an experienced volunteer, and you have ongoing training then for all of us. Our volunteers are very well-trained. One of the things we want to highlight today as well is that not just American volunteers and other people working with people who have mental health issues or have feelings of suicide, but anyone can check on how somebody else is feeling. And it's all about, like, obviously with the training process, what we do is active listening. So we'll explore people, how people are feeling. And at the end of the day, we hope that they'll come to their own conclusions on how to move on with their lives. And only one in five of the people that contact us are experiencing suicidal feelings. That means, like, 80% of the people who contact us aren't. So there's depression or anxiety or something like that? Yeah, absolutely. It could be anything, you know, relationship problems, depression, anxiety, a lot of mental health problems. Oh, right, yes. And more and more so, like COVID, obviously, you know, people are more isolated than ever. And I think a lot of people, particularly older people, have found it very difficult to go back into society after that, you know. And sometimes a American volunteer might be the only person who that, you know, caller might talk to if they pick up the phone, to phone in a number of days. And also, when we are talking about suicide and suicide prevention, the latest statistics, which are, you know, confirmed in Ireland, and they're from 2020, are that 504 people took their lives by suicide in the year of 2020. And by comparison, 147 people were killed in road traffic accidents. Now, if you consider the amount of public advertising and campaigns about safer driving and all the rest, compared to maybe campaigns for better mental health and better services, you know, there's a huge difference there, isn't there? Yes, there certainly is. 504 and 147 for road deaths. And of those 504, 365 were males and 138 were females. And one in 10 of those deaths were people of 65 and over. Really? There's a lot of people in the older age group that might be isolated and lonely. So that's where the loneliness and everything comes in, in isolation. And maybe dealing with the loss of a spouse, maybe a lost loved one, also dealing with physical illness, we say, where maybe you get to the stage where they just think life isn't worth living, and they just can't see a way of going forward with their lives. So it's important that we don't just automatically think of suicide as being something that young people would do. And we also see, you know, it's like we say suicide is a permanent solution to a problem that might be temporary, you know, and that with some support, they could move forward. And that our thoughts and feelings change from hour to hour and from day to day. So you might feel very suicidal and feel that those feelings will never leave you. But in actual fact, they usually do. And actually, one in five of us will experience suicidal thoughts at some stage in our lives. Whether it's a fleeting thing, sometimes to get away from, if you're in a terrible situation, you're thinking, if I could just close my eyes and not wake up, that this would go away through actually having a plan and planning to take your life. So the other thing that we encourage society as a whole to do is not to be afraid to talk about suicide. You're not going to make someone think about taking their life by suicide just by bringing up the subject and talking about it. And sometimes if you can ask somebody that is really struggling, it's a relief for them to be able to talk about it. So we would like people to be more open about talking about suicide. And you can give that person your time and have a chat, suggest maybe going for a coffee or calling in to them or whatever. And don't be afraid to ask somebody, how are you? How are you coping? You haven't been in touch much lately. If a person is missing out on their regular thing that you would see them at. And we're often, we don't want to intrude in people's lives, but they're often relieved if somebody does check in with them to see how they are feeling. And like what we offer in Samaritan's Anchor, any of us can do is not to judge whatever somebody says, you know, to give them time and space maybe to open up. And like sometimes as well, it's okay to sit in silence. Maybe then they will say something. Listening more than anything else. Obviously we ourselves and in fact your volunteers even. It's not an advice giving thing, is it? We're not in a position to do that. No, we're not. And like I found personally anyway in my own private life that if I actively listen to somebody, whether that's somebody in my own family or a friend or somebody, I don't have to cause their problems because I don't know what the best solution for them is. We do in Samaritans as well. We don't have to fix people's problems. All we have to do is listen. And you say somebody rings and tells them, you know, whatever the issue is, that sounds like a really difficult place to be in. Would you like to tell me a bit more about that? And the conversation goes on. And at the end of maybe a 25-minute conversation, they might say, thank you so much for that advice. Even though it's just by listening and asking open questions and learning and knowing how to do the act of listening. And it might just be clarifying it in the person's own mind. Exactly. Yeah. So like as I was saying, if you choose to stay in a quiet place and give the other person the full attention. And you know the way often if we're talking to somebody or somebody's talking to us, we all have a habit. I know I'm guilty of this, of scrolling on our phone or looking at something. You know, so you're only kind of half giving them your attention. So try and listen without judgment and try not to jump straight in with your advice. Great. And don't be afraid of that. That is fantastic advice from you to the rest of us. But I have to leave it there. I want to leave it because I want to get out some information. You did mention that if you're interested in volunteering, volunteer at Samaritan.ie. Yes. Samaritan.ie forward slash volunteer. Okay. And they bring you into events. When they fill in that, that's forwarded to us in Galway then. Now the other thing I want to get out is that, I mean obviously you need funds all the time. People can donate by SMS I believe. They can text Galway to 50300 and that will donate two euros. Yes. That's right. Or also our social media like Instagram and Facebook. Like we have I donate pages. Right. That you can donate. Because a lot of our fundraising was churchgate collections and a kind of a flat day on the street. And those fundraising things are gone now really since COVID. So we all have to look at different ways of fundraising. Or if, you know, we go into the communities as well. We go out to schools. We talk. And sometimes maybe the schools would have a coffee morning or they'd raise some money. So we get money in like that as well. And in Galway it costs us about 80,000 to run our branch every year. So it's a fair bit of money that you need each year. It is. I mean really if everybody makes a small donation it adds up brilliantly. Obviously they can go on the website samaritans.ie and they could donate there. Or as you say Instagram and Facebook and so on. Okay. Well I do have to leave it there Mary. Thank you very, very much for talking to me. It's been very interesting listening to you. Thanks again for supporting our organisation and for having me on. Well you're more than welcome and it's a very worthwhile organisation to support. Thank you. Okay. Bye Mary. Thanks. Bye bye now. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. 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