Art, science focus: The first scholar under a new scholarship programme in suicide studies will take up his post at the School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin next September.
Seamus McGuinness, currently a lecturer in textile design at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), will work under the direction of Professor Kevin Malone, professor of psychiatry at UCD and consultant psychiatrist at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin.
"The idea of the scholarship is to embrace the pursuit of new knowledge across science, arts and humanities in relation to suicide in modern Ireland," Prof Malone told The Irish Times. "We want to further develop our research to expand our knowledge and also to rapidly disseminate our findings." The scholarship is funded by Denis Kelleher of the Ireland Fund in the US.
Mr McGuinness is originally from the Inishowen peninsula in Co Donegal. Living close to Derry City, he was influenced by the textile industry there and began to work as a textile artist. He has also researched the gender of textile working, where the majority of workers were men.This led him to the statistic that, in 2003, some 444 people lost their lives to suicide; some 94 of these suicides were young men aged 15 to 24.
Wishing to portray this through his work, McGuinness created a piece called 21G. He shredded 94 men's white shirts of all sizes (symbolising manhood) and sculpted the remnants into body forms. Each is suspended from invisible nylon thread at different heights, so that the shirts appear as if the body is absent.
"Twenty-one grammes is the amount the body weight decreases at the time of death and, for some, it suggests the weight of the soul," McGuinness explained.He will work towards a PhD during the four years of the scholarship. "By working across the two worlds of science and art, I hope to create a new language around suicide that people can understand," he said.
According to Prof Malone, "If we don't move from awareness of suicide to knowledge, there is a danger that awareness leads to complacency. Awareness is good, provided you pursue the acquisition of new knowledge."
McGuinness will work with other researchers whose current study includes the Suicide in Ireland Survey, where 1,000 families bereaved by suicide are being interviewed to gain knowledge about the life of the deceased and whether there were interactions between suicides before death.
A separate brain imaging study will examine whether patients with suicidal depression use different pathways to process thoughts to healthy volunteers.
The UCD AD ASTRA scholarship in Suicide Studies will be formally launched on April 28th at the Burren Law School Annual Conference when McGuinness and Malone will lecture on "Imaging mental suffering through art and science".