'Derry on its knees' - Martin Connolly

A Derry community worker has expressed his mounting concern about the perceived recent increase of the number of suicides in the city.

Speaking to Derry Now, Martin Connolly, the manager of Community Restorative Justice (CRJ) which is based in Galliagh Community Centre, said he is becoming increasingly worried by what he described as the ‘normalisation almost’ of suicide.

Martin said: “At the minute, all I am hearing are conversations like, ‘There was another one at the weekend’.

“It is just a vicious cycle at the minute. You worry for the future. You worry for your grandchildren and the young people in this city. It is terrible. It is heartbreaking.”

Martin said he found the current situation “very frustrating”. 

“I watch away to see who is coming out and saying anything but none of the politicians are saying anything.

“I am not saying there is anything they can do but they could highlight the situation and let people know where they can go for help. 

“There is help and support there but the politicians are too busy jumping through hoops about a company that might bring a thousand jobs.

“That money could have gone to HURT. It could make a difference to so many groups. It is so frustrating.

“Like so many people in Derry, I have had experience of suicide within the family and the threat of suicide. I think, at the minute, people are sitting feeling the same way as me and we want something done about this crisis.

“I think what they need to do is go back to what we were doing years ago, initiatives which worked. 

“There were a number of projects set up in different areas throughout the North, community-based projects, to tackle these issues, but all those projects were taken away and things were regionalised a few years back and that has left a massive, massive gap within communities.”

Back in the day, Martin said people in any community in Derry knew who they could go to for help.

He added: “They knew which groups were there because by and large the groups were community-based. That has all gone now but I think it is critical that that support network is restored.

“I would like to see some sort of a structure put in place for people and families who need help or need to get help for someone else, somewhere they can go and get it within their own communities.

“We have HURT still out there and groups like that but they also need resources. Currently they do not have the resources to manage the work. They are inundated.

“And that is where people are falling through the gaps. People are coming to different groups but they can’t get the help they need. They can’t even get the support they need. It is as simple as that and it needs to be addressed, urgently.”

Martin believes there is also a need for more community-based education around drug and alcohol awareness in Derry.

“All the Western Drugs and Alcohol Co-ordination Team services were regionalised a number of years ago and although those groups do good work, it is not in their remit to provide alcohol and drug awareness training events.

“We used to have all of those things locally, drugs and alcohol awareness nights and health information sessions. Quite simply, they do not happen anymore. We have lost that community capacity to respond to families and individuals in crisis.

“I still do referrals through my own work, through CRJ, but it is just the fact there is nothing in our communities that people can relate to. People are very parochial. If you say to somebody, ‘Listen, you are going to have to wait for four or five weeks until I get you a referral to the mental health team’, it won’t happen. People won’t do it.

“I have seen cases myself where someone who is in a really bad place is taken to Altnagelvin and they have sat in A&E for five or six hours and then they have walked out. And you can’t blame the police or the groups working in A&E because they are only doing what they can do. You can’t force people to stay in A&E for 10 hours,” said Martin.

“Another thing I would say is that it is critical that decision-makers talk to the families affected by suicide. They also need to be speaking to survivors,” he added.

“They need to be listening to those people and taking on board their ideas about what might have helped. ‘What would have helped your son? What would have helped your daughter? You survived this, what helped you?’ They really need to be listening.

“Derry is a great city, it is an amazing city but the darkside of Derry is it is on its knees. The ready availability of drugs and suicide is the talk on the streets at the minute. We saw it with pregabalin a few weeks ago. It is just a continuous cycle.

“I would like to see somebody in the city saying, ‘Let’s have a conference and look at this situation and try and get some simple ideas for short term interventions’ because we haven’t got six or seven years to design a ‘strategy’. By the time six or seven years comes along, there are going to be quite a lot of people lying in the cemetery that should not be there.

“I would even like some of our politicians to come back to me to discuss this. If I was a councillor at the minute, I would be jumping through hoops to try and get this crisis addressed. There seems to be nothing but silence.

“Resources need to be pumped into community-led, community-based initiatives and then you would see there would be a difference. Look at the dramatic reduction in deaths due to solvents when such awareness raising initiatives were funded. There have only been one or two deaths in the last 26 or 27 years.

“We need to get the funding into community structures which are already there. We don’t need to set up new structures or new groups. The groups there at the minute that could do it. There is a starting point right there.”