Students of NUI Maynooth are the pioneers of a support group helping students suffering from depression. Elaine Edwards reports
Late last year, Claire McGuinness (21), an arts student and depression sufferer, approached the students' union to ask whether there was any network or peer group to help those like her, who find themselves at sea and with no one to talk to about their illness, about the peculiar blackness and isolation of depression.
Strangely, there wasn't. But, with the encouragement of the students' union welfare officer, she bravely took on the task of setting up such a group: the Maynooth Blues Society was the result.
"I suffer from depression and I had to take a year and a half out of college and, when I returned, even though I found a lot of support networks there, I felt very alone."
She felt the counselling was professional, but she needed the support of fellow sufferers, people with first-hand experience of the condition.
On "fairs' day", the equivalent of clubs and societies' day in other colleges, she set up a stand. "We needed 60 people to be affiliated to the students' union and we got 93 people," she says.
"A lot of them were genuinely interested, not because they suffered depression but because they knew family members or friends suffering."
McGuinness has had three friends who took their own lives in their late teens or early 20s. "It's a high risk group, especially among the males."
When it happens within one's close circle of friends, "it's just devastating", she says.
McGuinness believes her own depression worsened around three years ago after she had a baby. The change in her circumstances necessitated her transferring from UCC to Maynooth, to bring her and her child closer to her family in Leitrim.
"I'd say it was gradual, from my teenage years, but it just got more acute around 2001. It really came to the fore. It was at the start of college. I had a baby when I was 18 and I had to transfer colleges to Maynooth. But with me, it's not really triggered, it's a chemical imbalance."
She agrees it was probably a kind of post-natal depression. "But it just spiralled out of control really."
She went into hospital around Christmas 2001 and there followed a series of counselling and psychotherapy sessions. She is still taking medication, which is reviewed by her doctor on a weekly basis.
Her three-year-old son, Órran, stays with her parents and she has continued her studies. She hopes to go on to do a post-graduate course in psychology.
In the meantime, she's enjoying motherhood and her studies. "I feel fantastic at the minute and I'm doing really well."
The Blues Society, which meets weekly on a Tuesday night and which she describes as "very laid back", has also really helped her and organising it now takes up much of her time.
"The group just means so much to people. There's one person in particular who I know wouldn't be getting through college without it."
It also keeps her busy and gives her a social life, she says. McGuinness is hopeful that fellow depression sufferers in other colleges will take the initiative to set up a similar Blues group.
A number of high-profile guest speakers, including 2FM presenter Gareth O'Callaghan, who has documented his own struggle with depression in his book A Day Called Hope, have come to Maynooth to see what the Blues Society is doing.
O'Callaghan, now recovered, says he was struck by the shared empathy in the group. "They have rallied around each other in quite an amazing way." He says an initial reluctance among the students to talk about their depression during their inaugural meeting gave way when they all realised they had shared experience of the condition.
And he says growing awareness of depression in society generally is "like a mild breeze blowing". But there is still ignorance and people will still tell a person with depression to 'pull yourself together' - the "three infamous words" and the worst possible thing anyone can say to a sufferer.
O'Callaghan urges anyone who believes they suffer from depression to learn as much about it as possible and to discuss it with their doctor.
He says people should know it's a "myth" that those who suffer depression will have to suffer it for life. "You need to know what it is and what it's not," he says.
The Maynooth Blues Society can be contacted by email bluessociety@graffiti.net. The group meets on Tuesdays on the old campus, Dunboyne room in Loftus at 8p.m.
Further information on depression or mental illness and sources of help are also available on the following websites:
www.aware.ie
www.mentalhealthireland.ie
For those feeling depressed or suicidal, The Samaritans can be contacted 24 hours a day on 1850 609090 or by email at jo@samaritans.org
A Day Called Hope, by Gareth O'Callaghan, is published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton at €8.99.