Staff at new Pieta House centres “flat out” with suicidal and self-harming clients
Psychologist Joan Freeman also said there had been a marked increase in the number of people with mortgages attending its services, the majority of whom were men.
However, 25% of all people attending Pieta House services are aged under 18, with Ms Freeman claiming that awareness campaigns need to focus more on people around a young person with suicidal thoughts rather than focusing primarily on the young person.
She made her comments at the official opening of the Pieta House West Tuam service, which will open six days a week and which has seen more than 70 people since it opened unofficially last December.
Centres have also opened in Cork and Kerry in recent months and those services will be officially opened in the near future, but Ms Freeman said staff in all three centres had been working “flat out” in recent months.
“We have a panel of therapists ready to take on extra work,” she said, adding that the first Pieta House Centre in Lucan in Dublin, open since 2006, has been seeing almost 60 new cases every week.
She said more action was needed to counteract soaring suicide figures which equate to 10 people every week taking their own life.
She said the Reach Out programme was due to end this year without having been fully implemented and that resources were insufficient in a number of areas, adding, “It is all talk and there is no action”.
Clients at Pieta House have, in most cases, already attempted suicide and have engaged in self harm, and Ms Freeman said male clients appeared to have two “tipping points” — work-related issues, such as unemployment or the failure of a business, and the loss of a significant relationship. She also said Pieta House had set up a tailored service for farmers in light of the number of calls coming from that sector.
* www.pieta.ie
* Samaritans: 116 123
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