Broadcaster George Hook told the conference about the night he considered suicide at Dún Laoghaire pier. He was at a low ebb, he hated his job in business and he had very low self-esteem.
"I believed that I wasn't any good any more. I was in a job for 20 years that I failed [ in]. I was in a job that I was miserable [ in]. I was in a job that I said said to myself on a daily basis, 'George Hook, you're no good."
He went to the end of the pier at midnight one night. "I took my shirt and tie off. I took my trousers off. Yeah, I was depressed and yes, things were awful. I spent 20 years waking up at four o'clock in the morning because I hated my work."
He said suicide "seemed like a good idea" at the time and he believed most young people who killed themselves were probably thinking the same thing. "I think if we could possibly speak to them, they would say 'I regret I did that'."
He said he did not try suicide again because he had friends who pointed to all the good things in his life. Shortly afterwards he got a call from RTÉ to appear on a sports programme. That led to a career as a rugby pundit on RTÉ and then a radio show on Newstalk.
"By accident, I found something that made me happy. Fat, balding, toothless, as I was, in my declining years I had found something that gave me self-esteem."
He said social pressures and low self-esteem were the main reasons for suicide. Teenagers had no challenges left because they had experienced so much so young. "I was old enough to vote, for God's sake, when I had a knickerbocker glory," he said.
"What we have to learn is to give these young people challenges. We have to learn to give these young people self-esteem. We have to give these young people a meaning of life, that life is not in a television, it is not in a computer and it is certainly not in a chatroom."
He said the number of young people dying by suicide was greater than those killed in road crashes.
"Yet there is absolutely no comparison between the funding, between the media interest, and more importantly the kind of television moguls like Gay Byrne, who front it, in order that road safety gets more coverage in newspapers".
