Health is Wealth - 7 - 18june2024

Oh, Doctor, I'm in trouble. Well, goodness gracious me. For every time a certain man is standing next to me, a flash comes to my face and my pulse begins to race. It goes boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boom-boom. Boom-boody-boom-boody-boom-boody-boom. Oh, goodness gracious me. I'm delighted to have on the line with Miss Fiona O'Malley, who is the CEO of Turn To Me, which is a mental health charity to help people. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, Turn To Me was founded by Oisín and Diarmuid Scott, who very tragically lost their brother, Cormac, to suicide. So, Turn To Me offers up to six great counselling sessions to adults living in Ireland. We also offer free and unlimited support groups on anxiety, depression, grief and relationships. I should mention, actually, I know I spoke to you not very, very long ago, Fiona, about this, but it's difficult to get free counselling for people. So, the fact that you are offering this sort of online all the time, you know, it's there for people whenever they feel they need it. Yeah, absolutely. And because we don't have waiting lists as well, that really makes us quite unique, and we hear really of unacceptable waiting lists. We hear of waiting lists. Some waiting lists are up to 18 months for free professional counselling services, which is, you know, crazy. 18 days is a long time to wait, so we're delighted to be able to offer counselling services without long waiting lists. And, yeah, it's one of our certainly really, really positive, unique selling points. Right. Now, I know you're going since... it turns to me as going since 2009. How many people would you have looking for your services, you know, roughly, over a year at the moment, say over last year? Yeah, so we have around 10,000 adults every year living with their mental health, and it's, I'd say, a fantastic charity, fantastic organisation. We take great pride in being able to offer that help. But, yeah, we have been going since 2009, so since we've started, we've had over 140,000 people living in Ireland with their mental health. We also do talks in schools. We do, as I say, those online support groups, and, yeah, it can be tricky, but it's a very, very worthwhile organisation, and it's very, very rewarding as well. Now, you say adults, and it is up to six free counselling sessions for adults online, which is via instant chat messaging, video or email. What's the minimum age that you can deal with? So we work with people over the age of 18. We are looking... We are, I suppose, in the infancy talks of introducing counselling sessions and support groups from people aged 16 to 18, but, you know, that's not something we have launched yet, but hopefully that will be something we'll be able to offer soon as well. Well, I do see that as of September 2021, you do offer peer support services to young people aged 12 plus. That's right. That's something a bit different, though. It's not like the counselling services. Yeah, so it's not a counselling session. It's an online support group, so that's done via a chat format. People can talk about the issues they're having, the struggles they're facing, and people can respond to them, and I suppose it creates a sense of camaraderie and an honour community when people are talking about difficulties that they're having and other people can respond having experienced similar difficulties and they can offer messages of support. So it does create a great online support group and it can be very, very powerful for someone to get that type of support because it's different to one-to-one counselling sessions where there is a mental health professional trained to guide you through your difficulties, but when you're talking to people who have had similar difficulties that you have had, that can be quite powerful because their story is your story as well. So there is that element, as I said, of camaraderie there and people being able to support you with lived experience of the difficulties they are facing. And, of course, being online, really, people can access help or counselling whenever they need it. They don't have to wait for an appointment that's coming up, I mean, even a week away or something. If they're in a bad way or they're in a state where they need help, they can actually go online immediately and talk to somebody who they may have talked to before, hopefully. Yeah, absolutely. So the average waiting time for someone signing up to use our services and actually logging on to their first counselling session is three to five working days. So that's one of the shortest waiting lists in the country for mental health services and it is, I'd say, something that we take great pride in. But I suppose the beauty of having online services is that anyone anywhere on the island of Ireland can access them. You don't have to go to and from an in-person counselling session, which can be a barrier to some people if they don't drive or there's an issue financially getting to or from counselling services making that journey or if some people don't have the time commitments. Instead of driving an hour to a counselling session, going to the counselling session and then driving back, that whole journey takes three hours, whereas if you just log on to a counselling session online, that's only an hour. So for people, some people prefer the in-person counselling sessions, some people prefer the online counselling sessions for those reasons. Right, so really you're trying to cater for everybody and for what type of counselling is best for everybody because it obviously varies from person to person. Now you say you go into secondary schools and your service is known to the pupils there. I mean, we all know, I think we've all heard anyway, of sort of youth and secondary school pupils and going into the university and all that. It's a difficult time of life and a lot do need some sort of mental support during that period. Yeah, absolutely. And it can be a very awkward period for young people when they're trying to navigate so many different things, including the pressure from parents and peers and the upcoming exams. And then also there is the pressure to, I suppose, try to navigate the physicality of the changes they're experiencing and that's obviously exacerbated by the hormones that they're experiencing. So it can be quite a tricky period and when we give the talks to schools in person, we give them tips on how to navigate these difficulties and how to prepare mentally for the upcoming exams that they'll have to sit. Yeah, which can give some students an awful lot of concern altogether. Now you say you have to register and that you will be accepted within a couple of weeks of that time. When you register, is it just a matter of giving your name and address or phone number or email or whatever or is it a case of having to describe why they're contacting you? So we ask people if they're planning to use our services, we need the personal information that we would need from them would be their address, their email address, their age, their name. We would also need them to, I suppose, confirm what stage of anxiety or depression that they're at. So, for example, if someone, we're an online platform and even though the services that we offer, they can be brilliant and they can really make such a huge, huge difference to people, we wouldn't, for example, be an appropriate platform for someone who is experiencing schizophrenia or we wouldn't be an appropriate platform for someone who is, I suppose, the more extreme side of depression where they are actively suicidal. We wouldn't be an appropriate platform for those kinds of clients. So that's why we ask them when they're signing up to use our services, are you aware that we're in the early intervention space and we would be best placed to help someone who is experiencing anxiety or low to medium levels of depression. So we ask those questions to make sure that we're the best placed, I suppose, organisation to do their issues and we also ask them those questions to make sure that their desired outcome of the therapy is realistic. Obviously, someone's problems aren't going to be eliminated after one counselling session. Usually, some people will need two to three, sometimes four or five counselling sessions and as I say, we do offer up to six free counselling sessions to add up. Which is great. Can I ask you, please, for the website address so that people can go on and find out themselves what you do and how they would go about applying if they wish to do so. Yeah, absolutely. So as I say, we offer up to six free counselling sessions to adults living in Ireland. We also offer support groups on anxiety, depression, grief and relationship issues. We have really helped large schools up at the moment on the leading search and how to manage that stress for anyone who has more exams left to do. And all of those services, as well as the free meditation service, they're all available on our website turn2me.ie. That's turn2me.ie. Okay, well that's a very easy one to remember. I thought it probably was that, but I just wanted to make sure. So turn2me.ie, turn2me.ie. Fiona, thank you very, very much for joining us and for telling us all about it. It's an excellent service you provide. You are a charity. If people wanted to donate to you, can they do that on the website as well? They can indeed, yeah, on turn2me.ie. Perfect. Okay, that's great. That's great. Fiona, thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thanks very much. Oh doctor, I'm in trouble. Where is goodness gracious me? For every time a certain man is standing next to me, a flash comes to my face and my pulse begins to race. It goes boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boom, boom. Boom, boody, boom, boody, boom, boody, boom. Where is goodness gracious me?