Budget talk must avoid raising fear, says FG TD

A senior Fine Gael TD has urged politicians to be careful about how they debate issues relating to the budget in order to avoid raising fears unnecessarily.

Jerry Buttimer, chairman of the Oireachtas Health Committee, said TDs of all parties need to use “temperate language” in relation to December’s budget because of the profound effect such discussions could have on people’s mental health.

Mr Buttimer was speaking as he officially opened a forum of the HSE’s National Office for Suicide Prevention in Dublin, held in conjunction with World Suicide Awareness Day.

According to provisional figures, a total of 525 deaths by suicide were recorded in the Republic in 2011.

Mr Buttimer criticised the furore surrounding the Government’s proposals last week to cut funding for services to the disabled, which he claimed were “frightening” because of the worry it had caused many disabled people.

However, he stressed that plans by junior health minister Kathleen Lynch, who could not attend yesterday’s conference due to illness, to provide more than 400 positions to deliver community mental health services would be delivered despite overall cuts in funding.

The Cork TD described his struggle in coming to terms with his homosexuality over a number of years before publicly confirming he was gay in April. “I want to tell other people that they don’t have to feel isolated, vulnerable and alone,” said Mr Buttimer, who said help was available for people with suicidal thoughts.

Guest speaker Stephen Platt, professor of health policy research at the University of Edinburgh, said there was only limited success in intervening in people at risk of suicide, despite massive advances in the understanding of such risk.

Prof Platt said it was “very difficult, if not impossible”, to predict who might take their own life, while it was also widely acknowledged how difficult it is to measure the effectiveness of initiatives for suicide prevention.

Research on such initiatives was “a mixed bag”, as some studies reached different conclusions about the effectiveness of similar interventions, said Prof Platt.

However, he said international research regularly showed that two measures do seem to help lower suicide rates wherever they are applied — the education of family doctors in recognising depression, and treatment as well as restricting access to lethal methods.

Dr Ella Arensman, director of the National Suicide Research Foundation, told the forum there was consistent evidence that the recession was linked to an upward trend in suicide and self-harm since 2007.

Over the past four years, an increase in excess of 20% of self-harm by males was recorded in 19 cities and counties.

A similar rise in female self-harm was seen in 12 cities and counties.

Dr Arensman said it was likely that the NOSP’s Reach Out strategy had contributed to a reduction in suicides in Ireland recorded between 2004 and 2007.