The video above features Brian Hartnett on the Afternoon Show in March 2009
For all BRIAN HARTNETT internet links see bottom of this page
--- BRIAN HARTNETT - PERSONAL RECOVERY STORY 2004 TO 2010 ---
At a Schizophrenia Ireland (now Shine) conference in Dublin in 2004, Brian gave a presentation about his own recovery story to a large audience. Brian first started hearing voices in 1990. Since then his experience of voice hearing has developed steadily.
In 2003 he became the Midlands Regional Peer Advocate for the Irish Advocacy Network (IAN). In 2006 he became the Advocate for the Clare / Limerick / North Tipperary Region. He is based in Limerick. He visits hospitals and day centres on a regular basis providing support, encouragement and peer advocacy services for his clients.
Brian also started Hearing Voices Ireland (HVI) for people like himself who hear voices and in 2009 he helped form RENEW which promotes the idea of well being as being a balance of mind, body and soul.
At the conference in 2004 Brian described the beginnings of his experience of hearing voices and the disruption it caused in his life and then spoke about his recovery and where he saw himself at that time. The speech was well received by many in the audience who had encountered similar difficulties and in the question and answer session afterwards, many praised Brian’s courage and honesty in delivering such a personal account of his struggle with voice hearing. The speech is below.
In December 2008 and in 2009 Brian added updates to his story which can be seen at the end of the 2004 speech.
Hello everyone. I have been asked to give a personal perspective on recovery
and what follows is just that – a description of what it was like for
me to descend into mental ill health and my ongoing recovery. I am not a qualified
expert or well read in this area, I can only go on what I believe. I am not
an authority on the subject but I am an authority on me.
What I will talk about is what happened specifically to me, it is not what happens to everyone with this experience although there are similarities. I will try to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible although it is difficult to describe in plain terms what my experience has been. Over the next 30 minutes I will run through the following:-
1. Personal background.
2. The beginnings of my health difficulties.
3. Delusions and hearing peoples voices.
4. Diagnoses.
5. The start of the recovery process.
6. Limerick SI group.
7. The Irish Advocacy Network.
8. Today and the future.
9. Thanks.
I was born in Limerick in 1964. I am the oldest of 5 children and I have been very lucky to come from a stable family background. I lived in Limerick until I was 17, when I moved to Dublin to go to college in the NCAD where I studied industrial design. In 1986 I qualified with an honours degree and soon after started work in a design consultancy in Ballsbridge. I worked there for 2 years and then I moved to London where I worked until 1991. I lived in London for another 5 years, returning to Limerick in 1996 where I have lived since.
Around 1991, at the same time as the company I worked for closed and I lost my job, I started to retreat into myself. I am not sure when I started hearing peoples voices and exhibiting signs of ill health. It crept into my life gradually. Thoughts began to become vocalised in my head and I began to hear voices in the babble of conversation in crowded places.
People often ask me what its like to hear voices. If you imagine somebody you know calling your name, you hear it in your mind not with your ears. Now imagine that voice taking on a life of its own seemingly independent from you. Also this voice is joined by others, mostly people you don’t know and they begin to talk to you in a very derogatory way as if they know everything about you as if they can hear your every thought. Now imagine that when you are talking to somebody in reality or listening to the radio or watching television that this layer of voices overlaps the real sound confusing and changing what you hear. That is what it is like to ‘hear voices’.
As this developed I began to get paranoid about being spied on and plotted against. I could not understand how this worked – were there hidden cameras? I wasn’t particularly religious but I began to think that this had a strong spiritual aspect to it and that maybe I was possessed by an evil spirit or spirits. Some of the voices I was hearing were people I knew, sometimes these people were in the same room. I began to talk back to them in my head but it was mostly conversations about very personal things and it was usually very negative and insulting. It was also very repetitive and it never stopped. If I was in a public place such as on a bus, in a restaurant or walking down the street, it seemed that everyone was talking about me.
I began to think I was involved with a secret cult that was planning to influence humanity with evil spirits and that I was in the middle of a spiritual war on a global scale. I was living in a constant state of crisis but I held on to my grip on reality nevertheless as a part of me questioned my sanity.
Over the next
few years I retreated further and further into this inner world until I was
convinced that everyone else including my partner, family and friends where
also possessed by these evil spirits and that this spiritual war was coming
closer to the day when the evil spirits would destroy the world.
I believed that I could communicate with anyone by talking too them in my
head and that for safety sake I should not openly talk to anyone about this
hugh spiritual crisis as I would expose myself as a traitor to the cult which
would have unknown repercussions. I had to maintain my faith in myself and
god while weaker people succumbed to the evil cult.
I was convinced
that nearly everyone had capitulated to this evil army and that I was one
of the few that held out against them. I began to feel different from everyone
else and that I was powerless against the cult. I imagined that for my punishment
I was cursed to remain half way between reality and this inner world.
I tried everything to reason my way out of this including giving into the
force and denouncing god and my belief in humanity. This was also a failure
as I wasn’t accepted and it just left me with a terrible guilt that
I had given in and let this evil into my soul. I thought that despite my best
intentions I was doomed.
This became a way of living. Everything revolved around this grand struggle between good and evil. The television, radio and every conversation referred to it. I struggled to maintain my faith and at times good would rise up against evil and sick and desperate people who had been sucked into evil doings would come to me for help and reassurance that evil had not yet won. At times like this I would be revered and applauded and treated like a hero. As a result I began to think that I was famous even feared inside this word. But evil would rise again and this just added to my sense of isolation and desperation.
Around the same time as I began conversing in my head with people I started seeing shadows and distorted faces out of the corner of my eyes. I began to look in to things seeing images of people, places, objects. These visions followed the conversations in my head. It was like a spiritual TV and I would see it all around me. It was addictive and I would often stare at fluid objects like clouds, trees and in the end blank walls following the ongoing events in my mind. Sometimes I would feel I was being physically attacked and I would flinch to avoid people swiping at me. I also suffered from sharp pains in my head.
I was effectively punch drunk from this constant onslaught of voices, visions and delusions. I was functioning on a very basic level living from one minute to the next. It followed me everywhere I went, even when I came home to Ireland from London on holidays. I accused my partner of lying to me when I confronted her about the evil cult that she and my family had succumbed to.
But this was a desperate outburst and I didn’t dare confront anyone else as I felt that events afterwards where my punishment for my betrayal. Nobody would risk admitting to me anyway that this was real because of the threat of reprisal that could even mean their death.
A simple trip to the shop became a nightmare as people seemed to know who I was and would insult me about my most private thoughts and fears. I was wide open to ridicule and being further cursed. It was bad enough at home but when I went out it was like running a gauntlet, consequently I avoided going out if at all possible.
This lasted for five years. It started first thing in the morning when I woke and continued all day long. At night I had intense nightmares about evil things. As I was afraid to even talk about this nobody knew what was going on in my head even though I thought everyone was in on it. I spent most of this time trying to maintain some kind of equilibrium in my mind between not appearing to be an enemy of the evil cult and at the same time not doing too much spiritual damage to myself by giving in to them.
In 1996 I finally returned home after the inevitable break up of my relationship with my partner. I had not worked in five years except for a few freelance jobs and I was penniless and desperate for an end to this living hell. My parents where good enough to take me in even though they must have noted my increasingly bizarre behaviour.
One morning my dad walked into my room and found me crying. I was at my wits end with the never ending suffering. My dad recognised that something was wrong and for the first time suggested I see a psychiatrist. There was no history of mental illness in my family and I knew nothing about it but when we did get to see the doctor he diagnosed me with schizophrenia.
This came as an enormous shock to me. I was also scared, angry and confused. For the first time ever I realised that everything going on in my head could possibly be attributed to an illness and that this illness might be treatable. But I was in denial – how could this convoluted experience which I had lived with for five years possibly have all happened in my head and no one else’s. It was almost more scary to believe I had suffered alone rather than believe it had been real in the sense that others had been involved.
It seemed impossible to me that what this doctor was telling me explained away the transformation in my live, but when he said he could prescribe medication that would stop this nightmare, a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon. I was worried though about what this drug, would do to me. Would it turn me into a vegetable, would I be sedated to a state of numbness. He reassured me by saying it was a relatively new drug and that it was the best thing for me. He mentioned hospital saying I could go there but I agreed to be treated as an out patient under my parents supervision. He also gave me a prescription for side effects.
The drive home with my dad was full of questions and talk of what this all meant but I still kept my voices to myself. I had always swore revenge on them some day but it was early days yet. I took the first tablet when I got home and the next few days I was very drowsy and slept a lot.
Looking back now I find it hard to believe just how all pervasive this experience had been. The effect on my life had been profound. My career as a designer had faded away. My long term relationship had finished. I had lost contact with family and friends. I was penniless and I felt totally isolated from society and the people I cared about.
The effect of the medication was to subdue the voices and delusions to a state where I could function to a relatively normal degree, but I found that I also had to be careful to avoid stressful situations. I had to eat, sleep and exercise on a regular basis. I also had to take the medication twice a day every day. If I didn’t look after myself in this way the voices and delusions would rise up and start to interfere in my life again.
I had fallen behind in my career to such an extent that I was wasting my time applying for jobs and attending interviews when my portfolio had not been added to in five years. Computers had taken over in the design industry and I didn’t even know how to turn one on. There was a computer at home so I started to learn how to use it.
I did a FAS course in running a small business. After a few months I applied to the enterprise board for a grant to buy the equipment I needed to start up my own design business, which I did. My dad was in the business so he was able to send work my way. I moved into an apartment in Limerick city centre and worked from there. But, I had problems with staying motivated after being out of work for so long and the voices and delusions, even though reduced, were a constant problem.
When my dad retired the work dried up. I tried bringing in work myself but it wasn’t enough. I had more and more time on my hands and I began to slip back into myself. I never talked about my difficulties and I felt alone with the voices again.
I got a fulltime
job working in a call centre but I found it very stressful. I felt I had failed
as a designer and I was going to be stuck in jobs with no future. I had however
developed a great interest in the internet and computers so I applied to do
a masters in multimedia in the university of Limerick. Much to my delight
I was accepted and I started the year long course and in the end qualified
with honours.
I hoped that with this qualification I could expand my repertoire of design
skills to include website design for the internet. But as luck would have
it while I was doing the course the market for website design and hopes for
an internet boom took a serious downturn and I found that I just couldn’t
get the work I hoped for.
After six months of trying to make the masters work for me I took a job as
a security guard to bring in some money. This was meant to be a short term
measure but a year later I was still doing it. My voices and delusions got
worse and I began to exist again on a very basic level. I still kept my illness
to myself. I had learnt that people were confused and even scared when I spoke
of it so I kept it in the closet.
I knew very little about it but I did want to meet other people with similar experiences. Through the internet I became aware of SI and I emailed them to see if they ran self-help groups. As it turned out they set up a group in Limerick and I attended from the start. It was a great thing for me to finally meet people with similar experiences but I was surprised that none of the group heard voices. I thought that hearing voices was part of the experience but I soon learnt that was not necessarily the case.
I also realised that I had other things in common with members of the group. The feelings of isolation, frustration and fear were prevalent. It was such a relief to talk openly about these things and my sense of isolation began to ease. I also found I had a whole new set of friends and confidants.
On another front, I had always had a great interest in music and I had made contacts in Limerick who wanted to start a club so I became involved with DJing in Limerick and around the country. While this was another great outlet I never talked about the voices and delusions with these friends. I was still afraid of the stigma associated with people with mental health diagnoses. In the end I started up my own club night called HusH which happens once a month and its now in its third year. I also have a radio show which I really enjoy doing once a week in county Limerick.
One night at the
SI group Paddy McGowan, then Director of Advocacy with The Irish advocacy
Network, attended to speak about peer advocacy. I had never heard of it but
I was very interested in what Paddy had to say. He told us that training in
advocacy was coming up and asked if we would be interested.
I started the training in Dublin at the beginning of 2003 and received my
accreditation soon after. I had been working as a security guard for over
a year now and had had as much as I could stand. A position for a regional
peer advocate in the midlands became available and I did an interview for
the job.
A week later I got the call – I had the job! I was over the moon not
just because I finally had a decent job with a future but also because I felt
it would be interesting, challenging and productive work. I made a call to
the security firm that I had wanted to make for a long time.
The Irish advocacy Network is an island wide, service user led, organisation that provides peer advocacy services to people with mental health difficulties. As a regional advocate I visit day hospitals and psychiatric hospitals throughout the midlands providing listening ear and advocacy services.
When I started the job I found that I received a warm welcome in the places I visited. Staff were happy that I was taking a certain amount of pressure off them by spending time with clients, an clients were relieved to have an independent listening ear from someone who had similar experiences with mental health issues. Sometimes specific problems that clients had would lead to direct advocacy work but more often than not simply having the time to listen to a client was sufficient to support them in sorting out their problems. We don’t advise people, we try to help them take back control over their lives by recognising what their real needs are. We also signpost people by provision of information such as phone numbers or names and addresses that they may need.
Around the same time as I started the advocacy work I met a girl who has become very special to me. I had been in many relationships since I become ill but most of them fizzled out when it became obvious to the person that I had a mental health difficulty. This I felt was due to a lack of understanding of what I was experiencing.
I met Michelle
at a conference in Ennis. She has a diagnoses of a mental health difficulty
and for the first time I could share with my partner the daily struggle with
voices and paranoid delusions without the worry of instilling fear and misunderstanding.
Michelle was able to reassure me from the beginning that somebody we met had
not insulted me or said strange things when we were going through the day.
In turn I was able to reassure Michelle in a similar way. But it wasn’t
just our shared experience of mental health difficulties we also had other
things in common and a year and a half later we are very happy together.
Another event I was involved with at the time was the phrenz of the media
project. This brought the Limerick and Ennis SI groups together to develop
an idea to use the media to help reduce the stigma associated with people
with mental health issues. The idea developed into a website with an animated
piece depicting a persons suffering from stigma attached to their mental health
difficulty and also an audio piece which is an edited conversation held between
the members of the Limerick and Ennis groups. The finished project was a great
success and I am proud to have been involved with it.
Early this year another piece of my recovery jigsaw fell into place. I started receiving counselling from a physcotherapist on a regular basis. This has helped me to come to terms with myself on a practical level and even though I believe it is early days in this therapy I am hopeful that a lot of damage done to myself and others will eventually be resolved.
Medication had a role to play in my recovery and I still take it today but I feel my real recovery begun last year when I started working in a job that values my lived experience. As a peer advocate my ability to talk openly about my experiences is a great help to people that may not have the confidence to do so. It is rewarding to have people who are suffering terrible anguish put their trust in you and share so much of themselves especially when you can see the results of helping them on a practical level. A little human warmth goes a long way.
The job has given me a sense of worth I had not had since my days of working as a designer. Another plus is the fact that I am able to make use of my qualifications and experiences as a designer by looking after The Irish Advocacy Network website and other IT work.
More recently
I have begun to develop a hearing voices network in Ireland for people who
hear voices. At the moment we are sorting out some legal aspects but we can
be contacted through our website http://www.voicesireland.com/
I still hear people talking to me that I can not see and I still get confused
about what reality should be like but the improvements in my life have helped
me with this inner world. The people I hear are more supportive now. I hear
the voices of and feel the presence of men women and children. Sometimes I
feel its people I know some of who have died, mostly its people I have never
met who come and go.
These people can be from can be from anywhere in the world, any religion,
race, political persuasion or sexual preference. So its like an open door
in my mind that is open to the world both physical and spiritual. I have four
theories on what it is that I am experiencing:-
1. The people in my life that I hear and feel and sometimes see are real people somewhere in the world who have the same gift as me, that is, an ability to communicate without physical means over geographical or spatial boundaries.
2. I am in touch with the spirit world.
3. These are voices and experiences generated by my brain caused by physical or psychological change to my brain and mind.
4. A mixture of the above.
Some of these people have been with me for ten years or more and I have a relationship with them something like one you would have with a member of your family – they drive you up the wall sometimes but they will always be there if you need them. They have been through a lot with me and we often have a laugh about the good side of this experience so I would like to thank them.
The support of my family and friends, the help I have received from the health services, the boost in confidence my job has given me, my relationship with my girlfriend Michelle, the projects I am involved with and indeed being asked to speak here today – all have been part of my recovery and I would like to sincerely thank everyone concerned.
I
am not sure if the war between good and evil rages on inside, it certainly
seems like it does in the physical world but I keep an open mind on what this
inner world is because sometimes its impossible to ignore certain experiences.
One thing is for sure I am still learning to come to terms with who I am –
Brian Hartnett!
Thanks.
Limerick - Christmas 2008
Hello again! I am glad to say that things for me are better than ever. I went through a big change in the last six months. I changed my medication and it was like coming out of a dream. I had been on Clozoril for the last two years, but I was on too much of it and I was really dopey on it, dozing off all the time. I don't remember half the things that happened unfortunately. Anyway I am now on a low dose of Seroquel and I am leading a much fuller life. Myself and Michelle (my partner) go swimming and walking at the weekends and we also do yoga once a week. We changed our diet as well - we don't eat red meat or dairy products anymore, we eat a lot of fish, chicken, fresh vegetables and fruit. I'm also doing a water color painting class every Thursday night.
I have lived with my voices now for almost 20 years and as I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1996 I have gone on the assumption since, that I have a mental illness. However when I changed my medication the true nature of my voices was revealed to me and it wasn't good. I realized that what I was dealing with was basically, evil. I had never considered very strongly the spiritual side of hearing voices, for me it had always been a mental thing even though over time I became convinced that these voices were real people both alive and deceased. As I went through this change I felt I was in a spiritual crisis and it came to me one night that if I was too start heading back in the opposite direction to where I had been slowly slipping for a long time I had to pray to show that I understood the true nature of my predicament – I did, and it worked!
I wont go into all the details of what happened, suffice to say that it was a very bumpy ride at first and is still a struggle, but I now realize that I am actually in a very privileged position as I am aware of the truth of a very basic thing in life - that is that there is an after life and even though we have to life this life to the full, the most important thing is where we are spiritually when we die. If I had died six months ago, even though I am a good person, I would have been in trouble because of where I was spiritually. The best thing about this is that, even though it is hard to live with voices and this knowledge, I know that I can use my experience to help people in reality and in spirit which is really a gift from God.
Myself and Michelle have been together now for over five years and on the anniversary of us meeting during the summer we got engaged. We plan to get married on the 7th anniversary of our meeting, in 2010. This is a big achievement for both of us considering what we have been through over the years and we are really looking forward to it. With all the doom and gloom about at the moment I am glad to be bringing you some positive news.
I hope you have a great time in 2009 and as always I am happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me by phone on 087 9259146 or by email here. Drop me a line and let me know how you are getting on. Take care. All the best. Brian.
LATER ON…
I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in 1996. I had been having 'unusual' experiences for seven years previous to this. I had no dealings with psychiatry up until then. I had been through a lot of changes up to this point but this event in 1996 sent me on a course from which I am only now emerging.
I have had to live with the effects of having this label pinned on me ever since including doubts that I really am schizophrenic! But thankfully I am strong enough that these times of doubt are few. If I did believe I was schizophrenic I really would be crazy!
My experience has developed over the years with this added dimension to my life. I believe everyone has this experience to one degree or another. In a way I believe we are all 'schizophrenic' because I believe this experience is essentially a spiritual one and 'schizophrenia' is just a word for spiritual experiences which we all have.
We all have some degree of awareness of our spirituality. I read on the The Incarceration of John. Facebook site: "When I talk to God it is called praying, when God talks to me it is called schizophrenia." This sums it up for me.
The problem with psychiatry is it attempts to rigidly define peoples spiritual and mental experiences with labels like schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, manic depression, personality disorder etc etc. As long as psychiatry is supported it will continue to classify peoples minds and how they think, apply labels like this and promote more and more psychiatric drugs to ‘treat’ these ‘illnesses’ which we are supposed to have since birth.
The word schizophrenia has no relevance what so ever to my daily experience other than a lot of people including family and friends see me in terms of being 'schizophrenic'.
If I am doing well, it is in spite of being ‘schizophrenic’. If things are going wrong for me, it is ‘probably the illness holding him back’. Everything I do is seen in terms of being ‘ill’ and struggling with ‘the illness’.
The worst thing about all this is that I cannot blame most people, including those with diagnoses, who see me in this way because this problem is so entrenched in our thinking. It is hard to see the true person when they have been labelled, are on meds and maybe having terrible problems in life.
Life would be hard enough without psychiatry, but with it, we will always struggle to see one another in a natural and untainted way. The psychiatric labelling system and the psychiatric drugs that are filtering into our society more and more are dividing us in a way that is very subtle.
It is this subtle twisting of the truth about people that makes it so hard to see that the problem is psychiatry and not people.
People have overwhelming periods in their lives when they need to get away from the situation they are in (which is usually complicated) to a place of retreat which is safe and healthy. This place should be one where people can talk openly about their lives with people of experience. Telling ‘our story’ and being properly listened too is fundamental to understanding ourselves and others.
But it should also be a place where you can exercise, eat well, feed your mind with positivity and realize your spirituality. You need to look after your mind, your body and your soul in order to have well being!
This whole process can therefore be seen as one of renewal and if properly supported can ultimately be used in a positive way to help the person and others.
Unfortunately what is happening more and more is that innocent people who are being overwhelmed are getting involved with psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Once you start thinking in terms of psychiatry and taking the drugs it is very hard for you and others around you to see out of it back to the real world (which is struggling to stay uninvolved in psychiatry too!).
The biggest problem is that psychiatry and the system and industry that revolve around it is so all pervasive that we are fooling ourselves if we think we can improve it in any way or somehow make it work because it is fundamentally flawed and will eventually implode.
Abolishing the labels is a good thing but what we really need to do is walk away from the entire concept of psychiatry and ‘mental health’ as it is and show a lead in a new direction which promotes the idea of individual wellbeing in mind, body and soul, achieved and sustained in a natural and healthy way.
We need to support each other in this move and all sorts of ‘people of experience’, probably the very ones who have been labelled, are the very ones to do it!
I see my experience now as both a responsibility and a privilege. With the knowledge and strength I have because of my experience I believe I can contribute to the lead away from old ways of thinking and intransigence to a better way of seeing people for what they are - human.
Brian Hartnett – Hearing Voices Ireland (HVI). San Diego March 2009.
AND AGAIN…
In April 2009 Michelle and I went our separate ways. It came as a shock to everyone including ourselves but we knew it was the right thing to do.
It was a testament to the honesty and understanding in our relationship that we were able to talk honestly about where we found ourselves as a couple after being together for nearly six years. When we had met we were right for each other but we had moved on and it was time to part. We both felt we had gained enormously from our time together but fundamental incompatibilities and the fact that we needed to have time alone to reconfigure ourselves meant for Michelle and Brian as a couple, time was up.
Two months later we are surer than ever that we made the right decision. You can not be 100% sure in a situation like this that you are doing the right thing but we stuck to our decision to part and in the end it made it a lot easier. Michelle and I still have contact but we are living separate lives now and are happier for it. Part of our difficulty in separating was that we had gotten engaged to be married next year. In a way it was this prospect that made us think seriously about our long term future together. In the end the reality of our situation was obvious and once we faced up to it, talked about it and made a decision it was a weight off our shoulders.
I have found that over the last two months I am rediscovering parts of me which I had lost contact with or denied. I am letting various elements of my life come into focus as I want to move on from where I have been. What lies ahead of me I am not sure but I feel having put so many self doubts behind me that I have potential to grow. I am looking forward to the summer ahead. I have a lot of work to do but I know I will enjoy myself along the way.
As regards my attitude to the mental health care system I now feel that we all have to work together in order to find an effective way of caring for people in times of crisis in a way that is effective in the long term. People should be able to move on from times of difficulty and learn from the experience.
In February this year I was involved with the establishment of RENEW who are promoting the idea of a balance of mind, body and soul to have well being. We believe we need to work on all three simultaneously and we need to find places where people can do this in their own way in times of difficulty.
I would like to say that I know plenty of good people working in mental health who want to find a better way forward and as always the people who have to avail of the services have to have a voice in the development of the service.
I want to thank everyone who helped me recently and as always I would like to hear from people who want to share ideas and ways of doing things.
Brian June 2009.
In August 2009 I finally
got time to put together the Campaign Against Suicide (C.A.S.) website. A
friend of mine, Shane Maher, was the person who came up with the idea and
I have supported him on it since. The other person involved is Rose Lynch
who I now realise is a very powerful force for good in Limerick and the world
in general.
The three of us had met the Mayor and Dan Neville, a local politician interested
in suicide, recently and afterwards we decided to record ourselves speaking
about suicide. These interviews, which I recorded at my flat in Wolfe Tone
Street were the catalyst for getting my ass in gear. I worked on the website
over the weekend putting together a short 3 minute film for YouTube to advertise
the new site and a free CD called ‘Life Is Worth Living’ featuring
the interviews.
When it was done I consulted
with Shane and Rose about what I had done and one concern they had was a reference
to ‘the Dundons’ by Rose in her interview. Rose had been making
the point that everyone had problems, even ‘the Dundons’ and I
decided to leave it in as I feel that it is not our place to judge who should
and shouldn’t be helped if they are suicidal. It may be a Guard, a ‘criminal’,
a Priest, a prostitute or a young boy or girl. I feel our message should be
that unnecessary suicide is everyone’s problem because we are all affected
by it in some way and that we should be talking about the issue in a way that
is free of social prejudice and labelling.
Another issue arose within hours of the website going live and I was glad
it did in the end. I was contacted through YouTube by Kurt Perry from Chicago
who protested strongly against the name of our organisation – Campaign
Against Suicide. Kurt had personal reasons for this which I read about in
an article on the Chicago Tribune website which he sent me a link too.
Kurt suffers from a painful disorder that weakens his limbs and breathing and he chose to die by suicide with support from The Final Exit Network. It brought home to me the need to clarify that it is not our place to say that a person has no right to die by suicide and I told Kurt that I would clarify the position of CAS in light of communication with him.
The address of the CAS website is below. Thanks. Brian.
CAS: www.caslimerick.com
April 2010 Update
Michelle and I became a couple again late in 2009. It is unlikely we will ever split up for any lenght of time again. We are looking forward to our future together.
HVI has applied for funding to develop a support network for people who hear voices in Ireland. We will bring news of that soon.
I will be representing Ireland and HVI at the INTERVOICE World Hearing Voices Conference in November 2010. See HERE