Re: Mum's suicide came as no surprise to anyone; Health Supplement, February 6th
Dear Sir,
One of the most striking remarks made by Darragh O'Keeffe in his piece on the suicide of his mother in last week's Health Supplement was that at no point was she offered psychological treatment for her depression.
The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Tim O'Malley, also raised this hugely important issue of the over-prescription of drugs in the treatment of depression recently.
And, Dr Michael Corry and Dr Aine Tubridy also deal with it in their book, Depression: an Emotion, not a Disease (Mercier Press €14.99). Dr Corry and Dr Tubridy's point is that depression is an essential part of our emotional system and it is natural to experience it. There are many other ways of dealing with depression, such as psychotherapy, counselling, body work and meditation, without totally relying on prescribed drugs. We just need to find out what works for us.
The human psyche needs nourishment on many levels and in this day and age this has become more apparent.
I had learned this the hard way from a wonderful, funny, intelligent, creative and exciting woman, a family friend. She was well educated and had travelled widely. She married and she and her husband had four children. But sadly they parted.
As time went on she began to suffer with her "nerves" and she began to drink; at first only at the weekends and then every day.
She was prescribed Valium. Over a period of time her whole personality changed, she became paranoid and found it very hard to cope and to sleep. She was prescribed sleeping tablets.
Once, while on a holiday she discovered she had forgotten her tables and had to cut short her holiday and ended up in A&E because her system had gone into shock and she was having hallucinations.
Her family and friends realised after this incident that she was addicted to these tablets. It was a shock to her to discover this. For the next seven years she tried to fight her addiction, sometimes with success and sometimes without success. Something would happen to her in her life and back she would go to her tablets. Her family tried all they could to help her get off the tablets but she was very secret and cunning and fooled them.
At no time did her doctor suggest that she should go for counselling or psychotherapy. She visited her doctor so often that at Christmas she used to give him a bottle of whiskey. She was addicted to keeping him in her favour.
However, somewhere in all of her madness an inner strength started to grow in her and finally in her early 70s she put herself into rehab. At this stage her family, the nurses and doctors dealing with her thought she would not be able for the therapy and would not succeed.
She was weaned off the tablets and alcohol and this gave her an opportunity to address unresolved issues finally. She made peace with her past and was able to come to terms with it
Sadly, she was to enjoy her newfound freedom for only two years because she developed cancer and died in September, 1989. However, in that short time she reconnected with her family and they were delighted to have had that time with her. But they could have had so much more.
Thirty years of taking Valium and sleeping tablets is a long time and such a sad waste of a life.
Counselling would have been one avenue that could have been explored but it was never suggested to her. Learning to meditate and to reconnect with her inner self could have helped her to relax. When she was given the chance to talk about her past it benefited her greatly. With a wide range of alternative remedies for various medical problems now widely available, today there is another way.
It is very hard to realise that the system is still failing and the abuse of prescription drugs still exists. How many more lives will be ruined before proactive action is taken? An alternative to the prescription-drugs/medical system route might not only benefit many for whom these therapies work, it might also cut waiting lists and save taxpayers' money. This alternative should be examined.
Irene Stevenson,
Raheny,
Dublin