Teen to record anti-suicide message

A leading psychiatrist has commended the bravery of a terminally ill teenager who has agreed to have his anti- suicide message recorded in an effort to deter young people from taking their own lives.

Dr Siobhán Barry said 16-year-old Dónal Walsh, from Blennerville, Co Kerry, was at an age when what he had to say was more likely to have an impact on his peers than any “old fogeys in suits” in her profession.

She said he was someone young people would be able to relate to at a time when “so many young men are at that very impulsive age”.

“My sense is that a young person talking to young people is more likely to give pause for thought, and really, when it comes to suicide, that is what you want.”

Dr Barry, who works at St John of God’s Hospital in Stillorgan, Dublin, said the experience of its suicide risk assessment team was that 80% of those presenting did not have a psychiatric diagnosis and did not end up in the mental health services. The reasons they were feeling suicidal were often “very transient”, she said.

“Having significant losses, feeling that you can’t cope or problem solve, the kind of hopelessness that goes with that is often very transient.” From this perspective, anything that gave pause for thought was very welcome, she said.

Dónal, who wrote a letter making a plea for an end to the suicide epidemic among young people, has been contacted by Kathleen Lynch, mental health minister, and asked to record his message for circulation in schools around the country.

In his letter Dónal wrote that while he was fighting for his life “for the third time in four years” and had no hope, it made him angry to hear of young people taking their lives. “As a 16-year-old who has no say in his death sentence, who has no choice in the pain he is about to cause and who would take any chance at even a few more months on this planet, appreciate what you have, know that there are always other options and help is always there,” he wrote in his letter, which inadvertently ended up being published.

The HSE said its National Office for Suicide Prevention was working with Donal and his family “to explore how his personal experience may be used to help other young people”.

An estimated 165 teens and young men took their own lives in the Republic in 2011, and 72 teens and young men took their own lives in the North.