The pain of losing a loved one through suicide is a grief which has touched far too many of us. Just over 200 deaths by suicide are registered each year in Northern Ireland, but that is far outweighed by the number of friends and family members profoundly affected by each of those private tragedies.
As with organisations such as schools and churches, sports clubs also find themselves struggling with how to respond when suicide affects their members.
It’s a devastating situation that Tyrone hurling club Eoghan Ruadh knows only too well. It has lost three of its members within one year, and is now seeking to work with the Niamh Louise Foundation, a Dungannon-based charity which supports anyone in crisis with thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
“Each death has a massive impact on everybody here within the club and community,” says club chairman Terry McIntosh.
The Niamh Louise Foundation is facing a crisis of its own, however. The charity has lost funding, including from the Department of Health, in recent years; without help, its days could be numbered, says founder Catherine McBennett, whose teenage daughter Niamh died by suicide.
She offers a grim assessment of the bleak landscape facing groups like Niamh Louise: “We are firefighting on this and have been doing so for years, we aren’t seeing any change from Stormont or anywhere else on this.
“They talk about strategies for mental health and all the rest of it, we see this on the ground and things aren’t getting any better.”
This on-the-ground reality is a reflection of warnings such as those from the Audit Office, which last year said the north’s mental health crisis was costing the region more than £3bn annually.
The Department of Health has a mental health strategy for 2021-2031. It is a good plan, costed at £1.2bn, but funding has been disgracefully inadequate; for 2024/25, the department is expected to provide £5.1m instead of a recommended £42m.
The draft programme for government makes only a passing reference to the mental health strategy, which is rather suggestive of where it sits among the Executive’s vague puff of priorities.
Early intervention and appropriate support is vital in dealing with mental ill health, yet we have a system which is essentially broken and in a state of crisis.
It is hugely positive that so many in our community care so deeply about the common good - and each other - that they will fundraise for charities such as Niamh Louise and arrange support events in clubhouses and church halls.
But we need the Executive to put its money where its mouth is and a health minister who will drive forward the urgent change that is so desperately needed.
