SEPTEMBER 2005

 A hole in the head

 by Dave Lordan©

We were seen and not heard after your log-broad thighs strode over our nuisance of young ones in the hall,

Clearing a path from the boot-worn stairs through tricycles, lego, toy soldiers,  cabbage patch dolls,

Waving an order to the quivering dew-nosed mongrel to “Get Down Trixie” off the fire side of your one-piece suite.

Mothers gathered at the press, round the table, you cupped your hands, gathered in  the heat.

A horse of a man in your prime, you sat chomping great jowls of bacon from the bone, swallowing glugs of Green Label.

Fed, you sat eyeing the canines of flames that leapt through the scorched grate on the range you used as a table.

“Shush” for the Angelus, making the sign of the cross, a “be quiet” for the six o clock news, a “put away that friggin ball”.

Then upstairs. New shapes flickered to replace your looming figure on the wall.

Navvy- your shanks swung down sledge hammers on tracks from Manchester to Derby Town to Birmingham to  Merseyside.

Living  on site, playing twenty-one, five hundred, draughts, making craic for a couple of hours at night.

What was earned you sent it home except for sean-nós in the Shamrock, a couple of pints, a weekly five minutes of fame.

Nana scolded with the promise of the back of your hand once Christmas came.

But you lugged  bags of laughter back to Mitchel’s, where six or twelve months taller, the children rolled and scrambled at your call,

and the little ones you loved but never knew would gaze in guileless wonder at the shadow- shapes you projected on the wall.

Then postman at the door - dreaded telegraph panic- staccato lines in black ink that usually ended with ‘dead’.

A hammer -spark of iron had blasted out your right eye and left a great hole in your head.

Sick- man’s grey pittance of years under ceaseless Kerry rain. Children gone to Boston, London, read and re- read postcards piled to stacks,

and anything you could atall to fill the brain, walking the mongrels, television, oul chat, a thousand torn and dusted paperbacks,

or spooked the visiting  kids with a glass of teeth, rolled out the mould on your tongue, called us up the stairs  for a surprise,

and there with belly-burst of laughter you would open out a suitcase full of eyes.

Snoogliffers

Dave Lordan© 

The Masters cackled the gossip at break-time

over tea and custard creams at the back of the class,

omadáns all of a kind useless sons of useless fathers.

Snoogliffers we called you. Your whispered names

like the stones we bled on or picked up to throw.

Garda Flynn made more than one of his special visits

to explain the signals, the long term effects-

red spots around the mouth and nose, glazed over eyes,

mood swings, fivers missing from purses, brain damage.

Keep away don’t speak turn your back and walk away.

Mom overheard talk of an epidemic in the churchyard

while Monsignor damned you through a winter of mass

to strait necked glazed men and women of the pews,

I hid behind my father's leg in the huge doorway

waiting with him for communion and the getaway.

Doing harm to no-one but yourselves you

spent a year at it in the shed before better things.

You would call me on my way home from school,

“Lordan , Lordan, tell us about the constellations

the men on the moon, the stars in the sky,”.

SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION IN IRELAND

By Dave Lordan©
Socialist Worker 08.02.2005 - 22.02.2005 #236

Between 1994 and 2004 more than 4,000 people killed themselves. Over 300,000 suffer from depression. Dave Lordan examines the reasons that underlie the rise in suicide and depression, and looks at how movements of solidarity can bring hope into people’s lives.

Why do people kill themselves? Because they have lost hope. What is hope? It appears to be the ability to visualise and feel the moments, hours, days or years ahead in a positive way. So says a recent report into suicide by depression support group AWARE which draws attention to the shocking number of people who find themselves hopeless in today's Ireland.

Since the mid 1990's more than one person a day has committed suicide. Suicide is now the leading cause of death among young men. The latest figures show that 444 people died by suicide in 2003, compared to 336 in road accidents. Between 1994 and 2004 more than 4,000 people killed themselves. Ten times this number attempted suicide. 300,000 people suffer depression. The increase in the suicide rate since 1990 is 8% but young male suicide increased by a much higher 70%.

‘Spiritual Vacuum’

One common explanation for these figures is the 'spiritual vacuum' left behind by the collapse of religious faith and authority in the 1990's. But the real explanation has to do with this world, not the next. The rates of suicide, attempted suicide and depression have increased as the standard and extent of public health provision has declined under the neo-liberal policies of Fianna Fail/PD's. The public housing shortage, together with chronic underfunding for vulnerable groups like the mentally ill and the long term unemployed, have also contributed to making living extremely difficult for many.

As in most areas of public health, services for patients with depressive illnesses are totally inadequate. Patients wait up to a year for a psychiatric assessment. Services are particularly poor in rural Ireland where suicide rates are up to 25% higher than in Dublin. In many towns there are no public counselors. One of the highest rates of suicide occurs among psychiatric patients who have been released from hospitals and left with little support.

Over-Prescription

GP's compensate for this lack of services by over-prescribing anti-depressants. These controversial drugs work by stimulating the brain to produce a mood enhancing chemical called serotonin. They can have severe side effects and in a significant minority of cases have been shown to contribute to worsening depression, particularly during withdrawal.

In 2003 205,764 medical card holders were prescribed anti-depressants at a cost of €34,404,555. Another €16m euro was reimbursed by the state under the drugs payment scheme. This compares with an average of €3 million a year spent by the government on suicide prevention and awareness.

Studies show that the poor and oppressed are at a greater risk of suicide than the upper levels of society. This is most obvious in extreme cases like Hitler's Germany where suicide rates among persecuted groups like Jews and homosexuals increased dramatically. But poverty and oppression affect suicide risk in Ireland too. One in three suicides is unemployed, 75% of these for over one year. Other high risk groups are prisoners, drug addicts, homeless people and elderly people living alone. Obviously these are also the sections of society that are worst affected by the overall lack of social services.

High Risk

Young gays are also at a high risk of suicide. An American study found they were 3 times more likely to kill themselves than other young people. A study by the Combat Poverty Agency found that over 40% of Irish gays had experienced violence because of their sexuality. Some are bound to turn that violence in upon themselves.

Alcohol abuse is a factor in 1/3 of suicides and alcoholics have a far greater likelihood of killing themselves than the general population. Alcohol and drug consumption levels have soared in the Celtic Tiger though there has been no matching increase in public treatment for addiction.

Many media commentators glibly put the rise in self-intoxication down to primitive hedonistic urges unleashed by the boom. However a more likely explanation lies in an increase in material and psychological pressures brought about by the expansion of capitalism in Ireland.

Changes in management practices and the high cost of living force people to work harder and longer than they did a decade ago. We try to balance our high stress levels during the week with high levels of self-intoxication at the weekends, putting ourselves at risk of addiction and mental illness.

Image

Alongside this, the advertising industry exerts an enormous pressure on people to 'keep up with the Jones', using the mass media as well as every available public space to try and convince us that we need to buy the latest products. The fantasies of the market can have a hugely negative impact on the self esteem of those who don't look or behave like advertising models. I once taught a very intelligent nine year old girl who told me that when she grew up she wanted to be stupid and work as a 'dancer' in a club. No wonder she thought like that as whenever she watched TV she was presented with a blaring stream of similar one dimensional images of adult womanhood.

One way to keep feelings of inadequacy at bay is through self-intoxication. Some therapists refer to addiction as 'slow suicide' and it is obvious that the two phenomenon are linked; a drug erases pain for a short period- death gets rid of it forever.

Aside from poverty, the most marked common feature of the groups with the highest risk of killing themselves is isolation. Out on the hard shoulders of society interaction with others is loose and irregular and loneliness can be acute. Often those in the worst throes of despair simply have no-one to talk to, no network of friends they can trust. Professionals emphasise group therapy and other kinds of peer interaction treatment for addicts and the mentally ill in recovery precisely because the less alone people feel, the more valuable their life becomes to them.

Alienation

Suicide rates are high in societies where many people feel powerless to change desperate situations. The feeling of having no way of influencing the institutions that run our lives and so of having little control over our destinies is what Marx describes as alienation. Alienation is particularly acute where there is a low level of social solidarity and individuals are left to fend for themselves in what can seem a hostile world not worth living in. During the mid 90’s in Russia, as society began to breakdown due to mass unemployment and immiseration, the suicide rate leapt to 42 per 100,000- compared with 13 per 100,000 in Ireland.

Conversely, studies have shown a significant decrease in suicide rates among societies that have been shaken out of long-term stasis by a mass movement for radical change. In mainland Britain the years between 1963 and 1974 saw a huge increase in the involvement of people in active politics, culminating in the overthrow of a right-wing government by a miners' strike, which was supported by a majority of the population. These years also saw the suicide rate decrease by 34%.

This is because mass movements like today's anti-war movement raise the general level of hope in society. They provide a positive focus around which many can break out of their isolation and despair. When they win they can provide an incontrovertible example to millions of how by working together we can alter both our individual circumstances and change the overall direction of society. As solidarity increases so does hope for a better future for everybody.

Today we must show solidarity for those at risk of suicide by campaigning for better health services. But we must also work together to overthrow capitalism, since it is the placing of profit before people which is the root cause of the wars, poverty, and environmental catastrophes that provide such good grounds for hopelessness.