The suicide prevention and counselling service Pieta has warned it may not be able to continue its services indefinitely, unless it gets increased income from Government.
Launching its annual report for 2023 and a five-year development strategy on World Suicide Prevention Day on Tuesday, Pieta chief executive Stephanie Mangan said the charity cannot remain “an outlier” in terms of Government funding.
She said running Pieta costs about €17 million a year “with over 85 per cent of the funding we need coming from our generous donors and dedicated supporters”.
Verona Farrell of Pieta said the numbers in the 2023 annual report showed last year was “another very big year for Pieta”. But she said “behind every number is a life” and while there was an “ongoing and increasing risk that we may not have the funding”, there was a consequence that “we may not be able to keep going in the future.”
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The annual report shows the charity provided nearly 51,000 hours of professional intervention and bereavement counselling in 2023.
In addition, more than 103,000 calls and texts were received from individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts, self-harm or the loss of a loved one to suicide.
Pieta’s 23 centres across the Republic supported almost 7,000 people through in-person counselling and 4, 600 more through remote counselling over the phone and on video.
The charity also operates a Resilience Academy which is a six-week programme aimed at second-year students, designed to foster emotional resilience. Some 40 per cent of Pieta’s clients are under the age of 18 years.
Pieta’s five-year plan, Hope in Action, was also launched on Tuesday. It envisages enhanced community engagement, with an outreach centre recently opened in Drogheda and others planned for counties Cavan and Monaghan.
Ms Mangan said the charity was “deeply grateful for the continuing extraordinary support from the Irish public through donations and fundraising”.
However, she added “achieving a long-term impact requires a substantial and sustained investment from the State. On World Suicide Prevention Day we urge the Government to prioritise and invest in sustainable suicide and self-harm prevention services to ensure that every individual in need receives the support they deserve.”
In a pre-recorded video message played at the launch, Minister for State for Mental Health Mary Butler said: “Pieta has changed the narrative on suicide here in Ireland, with your vision of a world where suicide, self-harm and stigma are replaced by hope, self-care and acceptance.”
“Suicide prevention is everyone’s business, and it must be a priority for us all” she said. Ms Butler also commended the national suicide prevention strategy Connecting for Life and said “over the last 10 years, we have started work on developing a successor strategy which would build on the successes of Connecting for Life, but also learn from its challenges.
“Pieta and other community organisations will be really important partners as we work on this new strategy,” she said.
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