'There’s always help and there’s always a solution':  Minister opens up about mental health struggles

Kevin 'Boxer' Moran said he travelled the 'length and breadth' of the country to meet with people who have dealt with depression

Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran said the most 'daunting' thing he needed to do that evening was speak about his suicide attempt to his two teenage children ahead of the interview. File picture: Sam Boal/Collins

A Government minister has opened up about his own struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, saying he first told his children about it on the way to an RTÉ interview.

Office of Public Works (OPW) minister Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran has urged people to seek help for depression, as the Government launched its new strategy for preventing suicide and self-harm.

Mr Moran said he had lived through issues that are represented in the strategy “for a great number of years”.

“I went through an awful lot of difficulty in life when a number of things caught up with me. I had those suicidal thoughts," he said.

“I bottled within myself for years and years, and the only people who knew about it were my wife, my parents, my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and best friend.”

Ahead of him coming into ministerial office during the Fine Gael-Independent coalition, Mr Moran appeared on the Late Late Show in 2017 to speak about his struggles with depression and his difficulty with reading.

Mr Moran said the most “daunting” thing he needed to do that evening was speak about his suicide attempt to his two teenage children ahead of the interview.

“That evening, coming up the motorway with my two teenage sons, I had to tell them that their father nearly (died by) suicide, and explain to them on the way to Dublin what had happened,” Mr Moran said.

The OPW minister said he travelled the “length and breadth” of the country to meet with people who have dealt with depression.

“What we talk about suicide, what we talk about mental health, it brings on anxiety, it brings on panic attacks, it brings on depression."

Mr Moran said many people are afraid to talk about their depression, citing his own difficulties to build up the “courage to speak out”.

“I always say there’s always help and there’s always a solution,” Mr Moran said.

He said the term mental health has a “stigma” attached to it.

It affects people like me; it affects hundreds of people up around the country. They feel like it prevents them from going forward.

The OPW Minister was speaking as the Government launched its plan, Connecting for Life, on Wednesday afternoon.

The strategy includes a target to reduce the rate of suicide to seven per 100,000 or fewer by 2035.

Recommendations of the report include a call for Coimisiún na Meán to protect the public from harm via online and AI content which promotes self-harm and suicide.

It also recommends that the Department of Justice should consider changing the burden of proof for determining a suicide to a “balance of probabilities”.

At present, a coroner can only return a verdict of suicide in cases where it is found “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Asked about this and whether it is leading to an underrepresentation of suicides, mental health minister Mary Butler said it was “very difficult” to determine if there was a deficiency.

“I do think we need to get to a situation where we get more data and more information from what the CSO report, so we can target specific areas,” Ms Butler said, referring to the LGBT+, Traveller, and minority communities.

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.

• Tadgh McNally is Political Reporter.