WHEN STEPHEN entered Wheatfield Prison two years ago he did what most people would do when faced with the prospect of a tough and alien prison environment: “You put your chin up and your chest out because you don’t want to be seen as vulnerable.”
But for Stephen, whose name has been changed to protect his anonymity, the reality was much different. “When you’re in one of them cells it’s very hard to sit with yourself. If you have a bad relationship with yourself you can pick faults with yourself all day long.”
It was when this self-styled hard man broke down watching Coronation Street that he realised something was seriously wrong.
“I didn’t know if I was coming or going,” he said yesterday as he thought back to those first months in jail. It was this emotional turmoil that led him to engage in a Listener Scheme, set up by the Samaritans in five Dublin prisons, which trains prisoners to act as in-house Samaritans.
A year later it was Stephen who was doing the listening. “When I got back on my feet and was feeling better and saw other people who were down, you want to make a change,” he said yesterday during a visit to the prison by members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee and Minister of State for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch to mark the 10th anniversary of the scheme.
The listeners, who wear green shirts and fleeces which distinguish them from the main prison population, receive intensive training and support from the Samaritans.
Each prison has its own roster meaning at least one listener is on call on a 24/7 basis. They can be woken in the middle of the night on the request of another prisoner who needs to talk, at which point a prison guard brings both prisoners into a room. Confidentiality is the cornerstone of the scheme.
Samaritans prison support officer Orla McCaffrey said the scheme was particularly important given that the prison population suffered higher levels of emotional distress and that prevalence of self-harm and suicide rates were higher among the prisoner population.