People need real human interaction if we are to stave off mental illness

Last Friday was World Mental Health Day. On the previous Friday, you published an article on mental illness, by Mr Paul Gilligan, CEO of St Patrick’s Mental Health Services, entitled “Stigma of mental illness unfair and crude”.

Nowhere in his article did Mr Gilligan mention prevention.

We can prevent people from becoming mentally ill. Mental illness often begins with distress, ie a perception that an issue or life-event is unbearable and insoluble. This issue could be loneliness; it could be a financial; it could be something else.