'It was my family who stopped me — I didn’t want my mother to have to bury a child'
Róisín Lynam, from Galway, who is encouraging others to ring Samaritans if they need support. Photo: Andrew Downes, xposure
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Róisín Lynam was at college on the day her struggles began.
“I was in first year,” she recalls. “I was nineteen, away from my family and I had been struggling a bit but I didn’t know what it was. I wasn't adapting to college life very well. I was low but I thought I’d just get used to it. Then, just after Christmas, I'd finished a lecture, I went to grab the door handle and just froze. That was my first panic attack.”
Within a few months, Róisín was having up to six panic attacks a day and bouts of insomnia. Even leaving the house became a herculean task.
Eventually, she sought help with the university counselling services, which led to a diagnosis of depression and anxiety, both of which she still lives with today.
“It’s a generalised anxiety so it’s never triggered by anything specific, it happens randomly,” she says.
“As a person, I’m very bubbly and quite positive. I was a happy kid and a happy teenager, so my family was flabbergasted. I felt a huge amount of guilt about it, but that’s part of it. It’s part of the depression, the feeling of constant failure and trying to work past that.” Róisín ended up on medication, which she says “helped a lot”.
She even managed to get abroad to study for a year in Canada but found herself getting “into a dangerous situation there that destroyed me”.
She prefers not to elaborate on the details, but by the time she returned to Ireland, she felt that she could no longer continue her studies and was medically released from her degree.
“That’s when the suicidal ideation and attempts on my life began,” says Róisín.
“It lasted for less than a year. The last attempt resulted in my calling Samaritans. I’ll never forget it. I remember hearing my mum calling out to my dad in the back garden, asking him if he wanted a cup of tea. It was such a normal thing. I’d heard her ask him the same thing countless times but on this occasion, it stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t do it to them. That’s when I picked up the phone.”
“We’ve spoken a lot to people with lived experience around suicide and what most of them tell us is that somebody interrupted their suicidal thoughts and stopped them spiralling,” says Sarah O’Toole, Executive Director of Samaritans Ireland.
“It could have been someone in their family, a work colleague or a total stranger who just spoke to them and stopped that cycle and saved their life.”
For Sarah and her colleagues at Samaritans Ireland, that is the key message of this year’s awareness campaign for Suicide Prevention Day, which takes place every year on September 10th.
“Sometimes people just don’t know what to do and feel scared to talk to somebody,” says Sarah.
“What we want to tell people is that it’s OK to ask someone if they’re OK. We’re asking people to start the conversation because we know it saves lives.”
“It’s often hard to know what the signs are but if you are worried about somebody or you get the feeling that something is just not right, ask them. More than anything, you’re trying to switch their mind over.”
“It also helps to be aware of what supports are out there. Many of our clients say we were their first step to recovery. Making that call to the helpline where there’s a human connection with a volunteer, where there’s no judgment. It’s confidential and anonymous. It offers them that safe space to start talking. That can be a real change maker.”
Last year, Samaritans published research involving six hundred previous callers who stepped forward to talk about their experiences with the helpline.
The survey showed that almost 85% of respondents felt the helpline provided a safe space they needed, 79% felt genuinely listened to while for 56% it was their only form of support.
“It's been really insightful, particularly for our volunteers,” says Sarah. “When a volunteer takes a call, they don’t know who is talking to them, they don’t know where they are but they have that one-to-one connection. Then the call is done, and the volunteers don’t really know what has happened. So the survey shows the impact we have and it’s been great for the volunteers to see that they are changing lives.”
Róisín remembers her call lasting twenty minutes but to this day can’t remember the name of the person she spoke to and who she credits with saving her life.
“It was pure kindness,” she recalls. “I didn’t have to rush and I felt listened to. I wish I could remember the name of the person I spoke to because they made such a difference to my world.”
Soon after that call, Róisín made an appointment with her GP, who admitted her to psychiatric care. She spent three weeks in the facility and says that she “threw” herself into the therapy.
“I was exhausted,” she says.
“It was my family really who stopped me. That was the biggest motivation at the time. My brother and sister had had their first children and I didn’t want them to hear about me as a story. I didn’t want my mother to have to bury a child. It was very much about having to do this for them. But then it was about learning to do it for myself. That psychiatric care was a very good place for me to be for what I was going through and since then, I’ve been pretty good. I’ll always have depression and anxiety, it’s part of my everyday life, but learning how to change my behaviours, my thinking and adapting to the knowledge that it’s about how chemicals work in my brain does make it easier. For me, that explanation really helps. But it’s different for everyone.”
Twelve years on from that stint in hospital, Róisín still has “very dark periods” but says with the help of what she has learnt and the tools she has acquired, “they are far shorter than they used to be”.
“I have so many people to thank,” she says. “I got through it but I was carried by so many gentle hands. It’s hard work but it’s the best work you’ll ever do in your life and all you have to do is talk. Your words are your weapons when it comes to mental illness.”
- Samaritans are available day or night, 365 days a year.
- You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.ie, or visit www.samaritans.ie to find your nearest branch.
