One in six people think of suicide

MORE than one in six Irish people have suicidal thoughts, the highest rate in a survey of six European countries, research shows.

Psychiatrist Prof Patricia Casey, who yesterday launched Aware's depression awareness week, said Ireland and Britain had the highest prevalence of depressive disorders at 12%. The research showed that such thoughts were clearly linked to a depressed mood, she said.

Prof Casey said all post-suicide studies had clearly identified depressive illness and alcohol dependence as being overwhelmingly the strongest suicide risk factors. Alcohol was a factor in over two out of three cases of deliberate self-harm and must be treated aggressively, she said. While the State had a regulatory role to play, parents must take the lead in instilling in their children a sense of respect for alcohol. “We must do this, if we are to hope to overcome the darkness that binge drinking manifests,” she said.

The professor of psychiatry at Dublin’s Mater Hospital was particularly anxious that the public also realised that depression, an illness that carried a lifetime risk of up to 30%, was a very treatable illness. Unfortunately, she said, there were still many myths about depression. In particular, there was the mistaken belief that drugs were second best and that taking anti-depression drugs was a sign of weakness or an easy way out.

Some people also believed that all a depressed person needed was counselling to find the root cause.

“This may be the case when the low mood is due to circumstances [termed stress reactions] but, if a depressive illness is diagnosed, then counselling alone will not be of any benefit,” she warned.

Prof Casey said it was unfortunate that recently there had been a "vitriolic attack" on psychiatry as a profession. She was not an apologist for poor standards of care or for unfeeling doctors but, in stigmatising the speciality of psychiatry, we stigmatised those who needed psychiatric help for what were potentially fatal disorders.

“When suicidal ideas develop in the context of depressive illness then anti-depressants are the most effective treatment and to not prescribe these treatments could leave the doctor open to charges of medical negligence should suicide be the end point,” she warned. “The challenge to psychiatry is to be able to distinguish the sad and unhappy from those who are ill - a distinction that is always missed by the critics of psychiatry who see everything as a reaction to circumstances and never an illness.”