Mental health drive linked to recession

THE HSE is to launch a special mental health campaign next week aimed at people suffering as a direct result of the recession.

Up to 100,000 leaflets will be sent around the country as part of the new drive to increase awareness of mental health issues linked to the economic downturn.

The director of the HSE’s National Office for Suicide Prevention (NOSP), Geoff Day, said the new campaign would be specifically aimed at asking people to look after their mental health in tough economic times.

He also revealed that communication was ongoing with internet social networking site Bebo over removing websites which might glorify or romanticise suicide.

Mr Day said that in cases where tributes are paid by friends to someone who has died by suicide there is no need to have the web page shut down, but that “it depends on the content of the site”.

“When we have drawn attention to sites in the past where it is glorifying it [suicide] it has been taken down,” Mr Day said.

He made his comments at a forum with media representatives to discuss the reporting of aspects of publication of the Monageer report into the deaths of the Dunne family in 2007.

The report found that 29-year-old Adrian Dunne took his own life after killing his wife Ciara and two children Leanne and Shania during the weekend of April 20 to 23, 2007, in Co Wexford. The report also found that there was no definitive motive for the tragedy.

The report was published in May.

Mr Day said that in the reporting of the publication of the report there had been some “significant breaches” of guidelines set out regarding the reporting of suicide.

Some of these breaches included the reprinting of a text message sent by Adrian Dunne to a radio station, and sensitive details regarding the manner in which the family died.

* www.samaritans.org. Call 1850-609090.