Mental illness - Allowing our fear sustain cruel taboos

It is almost two years since John Butler, driven to the darkest of places by unrelenting depression, killed his two daughters, Ella, who was six, and her two year-old sister, Zoe.

He immediately left his home in Ballycotton, Co Cork, and took his own life, ending a sequence of events that changed lives, shocked and frightened his family, friends and community to their very core.

He, or more correctly his illness, left his wife Una with a burden any empathetic person might imagine beyond what is endurable.

It is not surprising that Ms Butler has described her life since the tragedy as a “living nightmare”. What else could it be?

Despite the fact that he was being treated for depression and that he had received psychiatric help, he went far beyond anything that we can accept as normal. His behaviour was, and maybe we use the word far too easily for it to have its full meaning, frightening.

Maybe it is this capacity anyone suffering from depression, or any of the other myriad mental illnesses, has to frighten us in such a primal, soul-wrenching way that sustains the irrational and unhelpful taboo status many of us still confer on mental illnesses. This at-a-pole’s-length judgment, this recoil from what is a normal but tragic abnormality is a fact of life we should learn to deal with more effectively and more humanely.

Yesterday, in an act of selfless and inspiring courage, Ms Butler needlessly steeped into the public square to try to change our perceptions and procedures so the prospect of another tragedy like her’s and her family’s is diminished.

She suggested legislation to protect children living with a person suffering from mental illness and that the welfare of children must “be paramount when someone is living under the same roof as somebody suffering with mental health”.

Ms Butler called for the Mental Health Act to be reviewed so that medical professionals are required to involve the partners and families of mental health patients in their treatment programme and argued that guidelines advising family members to get involved in the treatment of a loved one were “not enough for the welfare of children”.

Coming as it did on the day teenager Erin Gallagher, who committed suicide after she became a target for online bullies, and little more than a week before we vote on a constitutional amendment designed to strengthen safeguards around children, her call could hardly be more pertinent.

We all know that legislative reform comes dripping oh so slowly in this country so, as in so many other instances, we may need to get ahead of our law makers in this area. Depression is a complex and debilitating condition for its victims and for those living with that person. All too often, especially for young men, it can have fatal consequences. It would be dishonest of us all if we did not recognise that our attitude to the illness compounds the difficulties and sometimes acts as a barrier to recovery. Our attitudes are part of the problem, not the solution, and as Ms Butler pointed out yesterday, there is much we can do to confront this wretched condition — all we have to do is confront our fears which is all victims of depression want to do as well.