Building connectedness in Wexford's School Communities

It doesn’t happen often, what’s rare is welcome. A day out of class but a day well worth it. Those were just some of the reactions to Monday’s unique conference for all 5 post primary schools in Wexford which dealt with self harm and suicide. A range of speakers educated and in some ways entertained their captive audience from 9 until almost 4 O’clock. It might surprise some to use the word entertained. It wasn’t just about dealing with mental health in pupils, it was about mental health and well being in the workplace. We all have a stake in that, parents, pupils and teacher. It was a day when parents like myself who teach became the pupil. This post is much longer than my normal posts are and may be too long to read.
Stick with and it may just give you an insight into what happened.

In the next few blog posts I will try to share the best of the contributions to make sure they get to a wider audience. What happened was valuable and worthwhile.  A lot of work went into yesterday by management in schools, HSE and Tusla which brought in agencies that deal with mental health in Wexford. A huge thanks to the principals and their staff who worked on it as well as the HSE.

It was good to see Wexford Marine Watch, It’s good to talk, Pieta House, Wexford Rape and Sexual Assault Centre, the HSE, FDYS among other groups there on stands interacting with teachers. I know a lot of the people involved, it was great to see them all under the one roof. Cllrs George Lawlor and Davy Hynes have a long track record on the issue of mental health in Wexford from different perspectives. Both were in attendance.  But it was an event where politics was put aside and focus was on welfare.

First up was Athol Henwick who works for the HSE in the South East. Athol is a South African and he dealt with the issue of self- harm and suicide. He spoke for 45 minutes unscripted. I’ll try my best at getting in today’s post what he said.

In essence he asked the audience what they considered to be self harm, would smoking, tattoos, drinking alcohol be self harm? If not what makes that different to cutting yourself? In his view it is all about intent. Why does a person set out to cut themselves? Athol gave us 3 different sub sets of people who self harm. One group was those who are determined to take their lives regardless. The other end of the spectrum are people who don’t want to take their lives but harm themselves for attention and can be recovered. And in the middle there’s the rest. And that’s the biggest group by far.

He set out a spectrum ranging from hair pulling to cutting oneself with small implements to slashing or taking poison. He set out how there are 8 fundamental characteristics to self harm, the 8 C’s as he called it. Here they are; the belief that self-harming helps cope with the problem, that it has a calming effect, that it comforts and gives control and for victims of abuse cleanses them of how dirty they feel. It may also confirms their existence and also can chastise the person for something they feel they may have done. But it also communicates to others that they are unhappy.

Athol then spoke about suicide and how he believes the level of self harm exceeds enormously the level of suicide. There are no accurate figures on self harm. There is no automatic from transition to suicide from self harm but many suicides have a history of previous self harm.  Just because a person self harms does not mean their behaviour will automatically lead further to a depression, mental illness or suicide. It may well but there is no certainty. The reality is that self harm is by its very nature secretive. Often the last people to find out are the parents. But it’s very likely that when parents find out there is already a significant difficulty.  But self harm is a symptom of unhappiness. Young people who suffer from it need to be equipped to cope with whatever makes them unhappy.

Athol turned to suicide and asked what were the causes.  He says there are 2 theories. The Joiner theory is that people feel worthless and that they conclude that everyone and everything would be better if they simply ended their lives.  Another theory suggests that the person who wishes to take their own life simply refuses to see the other person within them and simply decides to destroy what they see not appreciating that they are also killing everything else.

At the end Athol invited questions, So I put my hand up. I wanted to go back to the issue of self harm. I asked were there any particular one of the 8 C’s that we teachers need to focus on with young people. We teach children from 12 to 18. They’re fundamentally different types of people. Which of the C’s should we need to focus on? Is gender an issue in occurrence of self harm?

In response he said that young people feel an overwhelming sense of relief when they self harm. The possibility of infection doesn’t strike them. While self harm in girls may have initially had a higher occurrence, boys are catching up. 

There is a national registry of self harm for Ireland, here’s the link

https://www.nsrf.ie/our-research/our-systems/national-self-harm-registry-ireland/

I hope this post is of help, It’s a lot longer than my usual posts but I think what happened yesterday was useful. Next post will be on contribution by other speakers notably Bríd Carroll.