REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE SAMARITANS ANNUAL REGIONAL CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE SAMARITANS ANNUAL REGIONAL CONFERENCE, BURLINGTON HOTEL, DUBLIN 4
Dia dhíbh a chairde ar maidin. Is breá liom bheith anseo i bhúr measc ag an ócaid specialta seo, agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chuireadh agus an fáilte fíorchaoin.
My thanks to you all for that warm and generous welcome and to Joe O’Connor for inviting me to open your Conference this morning. I am delighted to have this opportunity, on behalf of the countless individuals and families you have helped, to thank you for the Samaritans’ very special vocation of care.
In the early 1950s, a new children's magazine called the ‘Eagle’ appeared in the shops. It was colourful and intelligent and was an instant success. Soon its heroes, like Dan Dare and Tintin, were well known. One of the founders, as I am sure you are all aware, was the remarkable Rev. Chad Varah, the man who also founded this great organization. The two may seem strangely contradictory at first, one a world of exuberant childhood delight, the other a world of depression and despair but of course it was the tragic suicide of a 13-year-old girl, because she had no idea what was happening to her at puberty, which inspired the life’s work of that then young curate.
He had to bury her within hours of arriving at his first parish. The undertaker explained that the girl ‘didn't have nobody she could ask’. Whatever about the grammar, the chilling content of that explanation so shocked the Rev. Varah that he vowed to be a person ‘who children could ask’.
So was born the organisation which put itself right at the heart of one of society’s great silences and taboos, providing emotional support and an easily accessible friendly ear for those so troubled and torn that death seems preferable to life. Your army of volunteers received over half a million contacts last year alone. What stories of depression, isolation, fear, and despair lie behind that very telling statistic?
It is impossible to ever fully quantify the extent to which your work has saved Ireland from considerably worse suicide statistics than we have but we know that, without you, things would be considerably worse and only with your help and the help of sister organisations can we look forward to a future with dwindling suicide rates. It is a matter of considerable public alarm that suicide is a bigger cause of death than road traffic accidents, that while overall our suicide rate is low by comparison with our European neighbours, we have the second highest rate of suicide among young males and that elderly males are also a particularly over-represented group among the grim catalogue of suicide deaths.
Earlier this week at Áras an Uachtaráin we held a special gathering to acknowledge the valuable work done by so many groups and individuals on this island in the field of suicide intervention and prevention. It was attended by health professionals, academics, representatives of State agencies, people bereaved by suicide and support and advocacy groups, and I was heartened to see that the emphasis firmly placed by so many of those present was on creating a culture of collaboration and of sharing their respective skills, experiences and perspectives to bring closer the day when we comprehensively understand this complex problem.
The theme of this conference, ‘Interfacing: Inside Out’, challenges all of us to create a civic culture of care for one another where depression and mental illness are not so stigmatized that they drive sufferers into the dangerous alienation and silence in which suicidal thoughts take hold. Emotional health is a hugely important part of human life and we have a vested interest in ensuring early diagnosis of emotional health problems and the availability of effective interventions and supports. For over half a century you have made that work your mission. At the core of that work is a profound determination that every human being should know how important and sacred their lives are, even to complete strangers, that their overwhelming worries do not need to lead to a journey of utter loneliness but can, in fact, be shared and transcended, that the waste of their talents through suicide and the misery it condemns family and friends to, is an unnecessary tragedy worth expending every effort to avoid.
So you are there all day, everyday, listening, caring, not judging but offering practical compassion and the wisdom of your vast experience. Your work is only possible because eighteen hundred volunteers decide to commit to doing it. Not one of them is under any obligation to do so. Yet they do and because they do the Samaritans are available to the young man today who had been hiding his awesome lostness and has no idea that this too shall pass and his life can be good again beyond what seems like today’s abyss, or to the elderly man who has been quietly depressed without even knowing it and who sits at home growing ever lonelier and more at risk of suicide.
To those of us who want ours to be the kind of caring society where such feelings get aired and shared and dealt with healthily, it is hugely important that you do what you do. No thanks could ever be adequate. But then I know this work is not done for thanks.
When, at the age of ninety-two, the Rev Chad Varah held his last service in 2003 at the church where he founded the Samaritans fifty years earlier, the congregation sang ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended’. But the day of the Samaritans is never-ending. There is no message any one of us would rather hear than that the Samaritans had closed down because there was no longer any demand for the service. Until that day, you are a vital part of our community’s outreach to the suicidal. May your endeavours, here today at this conference and always, be vindicated by those lives you have touched, have comforted and have saved.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh agus guím gach rath air san am atá le teacht.
Go raibh maith agaibh.