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Ten times more lost to suicide than road deaths

This article is from page 6 of the 2013-02-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG

CLARE is losing over 10 times more people to suicide than to road deaths, and those working at the cold face of local mental health services say we are in the midst of a crisis that needs to be addressed urgently.

As many as 23 cases relating to people taking their own lives were listed before the coroners court in Clare last year. Not all cases were certified as suicide, with a number of open verdicts recorded and three of these cases still have to be heard.

Of those deaths, more than half of the deceased were in their 30s and 40s, bucking national trends which point to young men aged 15 to 26 years old as most in danger.

A total of 17 of the cases before the coroners court related to men.

Among the deaths were 13 hangings, four drownings and four deaths at the popular tourist destination the Cliffs of Moher.

Mental health workers in Clare told The Clare People that the recession has had an impact on the mental health crisis, with unemployed men, older isolated people and young men of particular concern.

It is also accepted that the number of people seeking help is on the up, but so too is the number of people dying by suicide.

There were 15,845 calls to the Smaarathans in Clare last year, that is as many as 305 every week.

Tom McEvoy from Pieta Mid West said the number of Clare people seeking assistance from the suicide crisis centre doubled in the last year.

In 2011 358 people were helped by the organisation based in Limerick. As many as 16 per cent of these people were from Clare.

Last year that number had jumped to 659 people, More than 100 of these people seeking urgent help were from Clare.

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