So many people just need to talk

MARY CREEDON was taken aback when she learned of the level of loneliness among older people in Ireland.

“When I first started, I was shocked. I thought ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t realise that there were so many lonely people out there.’ It is very sad,” says Ms Creedon, a co-ordinator and volunteer for Senior Help Line, the national confidential listening service for older people.

Last year, Senior Help Line received 10,000 calls, and it is predicted this figure will rise in 2012.

Established 14 years ago, the service is provided by 350 trained, older volunteers, working in 17 centres across Ireland.

Ms Creedon, who is in her late 60s and from Douglas, Co Cork, decided to volunteer for the service last October, after retiring from her teaching job. “I didn’t just want to sit at home and do nothing. I wanted to give something back to the community and I have always felt that older people do have a contribution to make to society,” she says.

After attending a training course, Ms Creedon took her first call. She works every Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon, for three hours, and co-ordinates the 21 volunteers in Cork

“As soon as we plug in the phone, it starts to ring, it is amazing. People want to hear a human voice at the end of the line, they are lonely, they are isolated, they are living in the middle of the country and may not have even seen a person passing by.

“They are hemmed in between four walls. But you want to show people that they aren’t useless, that they are not on the scrap-heap simply because they are retired,” she says.

Perhaps surprisingly, the calls would divide equally between men and women. Ms Creedon says there are many farmers living on their own, or men who have suffered a bereavement.

“I didn’t realise things were that bad out there,” she says. “There are, especially, a lot of men who are lonely and isolated. These men would have left school at 14, 50 or more years ago, and stayed at home to work on the farm.

“The parents are now gone and the old man is left on his own, not able to do very much at all now.” The service would receive more calls on Christmas Day than any other day of the year. Again, the majority would be from people who are by themselves, with nobody visiting.

The situation for older people has become decidedly worse over the last nine months, says Ms Creedon. Apart from loneliness, there are calls about family conflicts, children emigrating abroad, financial worries, marital problems and bereavement.

“The recession is hitting people hard,” she says. “People can’t afford things. I was talking to one lady and I said she sounded frozen. She said she was cold but could not light her fire until 6pm.

“If she lit it now, it would have gone out by 6pm and she would have to go to bed, and she didn’t want to do that. But she could not afford to buy a bag of coal.” The Senior Help Line volunteers will listen to any problem, Ms Creedon says, but cannot offer advice, especially in family or marital conflicts.

“However, we do find that by talking about their problems, they can often see the solution themselves, and then thank us, saying it had been a great help to talk to us,” she says.