A new suicide strategy in the North, where 213 people killed themselves last year, aims to help those most at risk, writes Susan McKay
It was hard and emotional for Philip McTaggart to speak at the launch of the North's new suicide awareness strategy in Belfast on Thursday. "I welcome this initiative and I hope it will save lives," he says afterwards. "But it is too late for me. If this had been in place two years ago, as it should have been, I might not have been as naive as I was. I might have been able to help Pip."
Pip was McTaggart's 17-year-old son. In April 2003 he hung himself in the grounds of Holy Cross chapel near his home in Ardoyne, north Belfast.
Since then, McTaggart has become passionately committed to working to reduce the shockingly high rate of suicide in north and west Belfast - twice the average rate for the rest of the North - and to providing support for parents and families bereaved by suicide.
Last week saw the official opening of PIPS House, a community house for families getting through the aftermath of a suicide, and for families of self-harming and depressed persons who could be at risk. It also saw the launch of the strategy, following a report from a taskforce to which McTaggart and other families involved in Pip's Project had made a major contribution.
PIPS stands for Public Initiative for the Prevention of Suicide and Self Harm. The house is on Duncairn Gardens, a once elegant avenue ravaged by the Troubles but now being redeveloped. Inside, the atmosphere is peaceful, though the administrator, Sharon Quinn, is constantly busy on the phone. There are calls from people needing advice on funeral arrangements, others from parents just starting to get worried.
"I knew Pip and I've a daughter of 18," says Quinn. "Two summers ago there were 11 suicides among Ardoyne teenagers inside eight weeks. It really hit home then. There is just such a vulnerability."
There is a meeting room, with a lovely mosaic on the wall made in art therapy by parents, and therapy rooms where massage and other treatments will soon be available. The window of the small counselling room at the back directly overlooks the peaceline, but there is no barrier to those using PIPS.
'WE HAVE PEOPLE coming from Tigers Bay, Ardoyne, Oldpark, the Shankill, Newlodge, Ballygomartin, the Falls - all over the place," says McTaggart. There are groups in Newry, Cookstown and Ballynahinch. Mobile phone networks are being set up and the aim is to be able to send someone out to visit families, night or day.
Last year, 213 people killed themselves in the North, 50 more than in 2004. One of them, last April, was 18-year-old Danny McCartan. His parents, Gerard and Carole, first got involved in PIPS because Danny was self harming.
"He was bullied at school," says Carole. "When he was 13 he was small and heavy - he used to get called Fatboy. He started cutting his arms. We sent him to his uncle in Chicago for a while and he loved it. He came back a different person. His ambition was to get joinery skills and move to America and make a life for himself."
Danny left school at 16 and went on a Youth Training Programme, but it disappointed him. He became depressed.
"He was in a mindset that his life wasn't worth living, that he'd no education and nothing was ever going to work out right," says Gerard. "The doctor put him on Diazepan and a high dose anti- depressant. That summer, he took an overdose. He was brought to hospital where he had to sit on a trolley all night and then he saw a psychiatrist who said he was a danger to himself. There was no bed available in a unit for teenagers so he was sent to an adult psychiatric ward."
The McCartans watched helplessly as their son was sent from place to place, doctor to doctor, social worker to social worker. Appointments were promised, then fell through. Treatments were changed.
"He was very aware that he was being messed around by the system. He wanted peer counselling. He knew no one was particularly interested in him. He talked about his suicidal feelings. He wasn't sleeping. He was cutting himself. He took thousands of tablets and the medication piled weight onto him. In the end, he had just lost all interest in life," says Gerard. "We sensed on April 11th that something bad was happening. The community psychiatric nurse came out and Danny said he wanted to go into hospital. The nurse said there were no beds. That night we got a knock at the door at 9.30pm. He'd been found in a derelict house a few streets away. He had hung himself."
THE FAMILY PROTESTED about the way their son had been treated. The North's health minister, Shaun Woodward, came to visit them, and has just announced an independent review of the handling of the case. The McCartans are impressed by him, and are full of praise, too, for Colm Donaghy, head of the taskforce on suicide.
"DANNY CRIED OUT for help and that is what hurts the most," says Carole. "It hits you at different times that he's gone. Sometimes it's a piece of music, or a film. He loved Stand by Me and Braveheart. PIPS has been great. In Oldpark, where we live, parents have set up a wee youth drop-in centre," says Gerard. "It is named after Danny and we help out. It gives the kids a sense of self worth. "
"A year ago they'd have been writing graffiti on the walls. Now they're painting murals that say 'Choose life' and tidying the streets. In July they're going down south. They think it's a holiday but actually they'll be doing a survival course with the Irish army."
McTaggart says the death of his son "turned me inside out". He was shocked by the number of people who came to him and talked about suicide in their own family. "There was nothing for them," he says. "I found out that Jo Murphy in the North Belfast Partnership was interested and we began to work together." They leafleted, went on TV and radio, devised projects to teach "living skills". They talked to doctors and to priests. "Doctors don't know how to deal with it and the Catholic church regards it as a sin," says McTaggart. PIPS dislikes the term "commit suicide" because of its intimations of sin and crime.
PIPS lobbied hard for the taskforce. "We have some concerns about the strategy," says McTaggart. "We don't want them leaving it all to the community. They are putting £1.9 million (€2.7 million) into this but there is a already a £2.5 million (€3.6 million) funding crisis in mental health in north and west Belfast. We need to signpost people to services. The minister admitted at the launch that in a 2003 strategy there were 10 action points on suicide identified and only three of them have been met. That must not happen again. Just today I was talking to the parent of a 15-year-old who is self harming and he couldn't get an appointment to see anyone for two months. It is madness."
There is evidence PIPS is working. "A man was drinking in a bar in Ardoyne recently and the barman noticed he was in a bad way," says Philip. "After a while the man said: 'That's it, I'm away up to the Grove.'" The Grove, in the grounds of Holy Cross, is where Pip hung himself. "The barman phoned Holy Cross and one of the priests went out with a torch and he found the man. He had hung himself but he was able to be saved and he survived."