Letting the light in

With the annual Daisy Days fundraiser for Aware taking place this weekend, Nicola Corless spoke to one person for whom the national depression support organisation was a lifeline

I am waiting for Senan* in the lobby of a Clare hotel. I glance around at the men sitting alone at nearby tables. What does a man who has suffered a mental breakdown look like? Is it the businessman in the suit reading The Irish Times? It could be the man sitting uneasily in the corner looking at his watch. Is it the man standing in slacks and check shirt who walked in and stopped to talk to a man relaxing into an armchair? It could be anyone. My moment selecting prospective mental illness sufferers is interrupted. A white-haired man in casual dress walks confidently into the lobby. He has a bright complexion and radiant eyes. He looks at me and smiles before walking over and extending his hand.
We walk to another area of the hotel. It is bright outside and the sun is streaming in. There are couples and families at several of the tables close to ours. Senan doesn’t lower his voice as he tells me about his lifelong battle with mental illness. He speaks openly about his depression. His family, friends, neighbours and co-workers know about his battle with the condition. His breakdown, he explains, was a public one. Despite his candidness, he is keen to use a pseudonym to protect his wife and grown-up children. The stigma of mental illness is hard to overcome.
Since the age of 17 he had had good days and bad in his fight with depression. Depending on the severity of the depression, he sometimes sought professional help.
“I’d be fine for a while, then five or six years later it would happen again,” he remembers.
The seeds of Senan’s depression began to sprout early. After being  beaten in primary school from the age of six, his self-esteem began to suffer.
“I would always have been considered highly strung but when you are being told all the time that you are stupid, thick and that you won’t get a job, when you are told that for years then you start to believe it,” he recalls.
One day, when he was 47 years of age, Senan was at work and simply broke down. He felt cold and weak. He was sweating. He just started to cry and couldn’t stop.  That car journey from his workplace in Clare to St John of Gods in Dublin is something Senan still doesn’t like to recall.
“It was hidden from my family. My boys, they wouldn’t have known that I was seeing someone or telling anyone about my problems. I felt terrible, ashamed, because at the low point I was at on the day, my son and his wife and my wife took me to Dublin. What they saw that day… the first time must have been a big revelation.
“I cried all the way to Dublin. I couldn’t stop. The journey was four and a bit hours at the time. It was completely… They tried to comfort me. They were very understanding. They told me I was going to the right place and that I would get help. John of Gods had a good reputation and I was admitted on a Friday.
“One of the big things I found when I was in John of Gods, I slept and slept and slept. It was a physical and emotional exhaustion. I was emotionally and physically drained,” he remembers.
A friend of his brought Senan’s wife, Ann*, to Dublin on the Sunday.
“I was still very tearful and maybe more tearful to see her. I hadn’t seen her for a few days and I knew this was going to be a longer rather than a shorter stay,” he continues.
Senan had thought he would have to stay in John of Gods for a few weeks. Talking to other people in the facility soon revealed that most people were there at least two months.
Senan was always close to his dad.
“When I’d come home from hospital at weekends I felt sad for him. I would go to see him on a Friday and I couldn’t go back on a Sunday to say goodbye, even though I would only see him once a week. The hello on a Friday was grand but the goodbye on a Sunday was awful. One Sunday I went home and said goodbye. I went to leave and my father came to the door and gave me a kiss on the cheek and said ‘I love you’ and that meant a lot,” Senan remembers.
A year after his breakdown his father died. It was with the help of his wife that he got through this and depression.
“When we married, Ann took me for better or worse and she implemented this. She stuck with me through thick and thin,” he asserts.
As well as her regular visits to Dublin, when Senan left St John of Gods diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Ann helped him adapt back into their lives in Clare.
“Leaving John of Gods several months later, there was an uncertainty about what would be outside but I was looking forward to it. John of Gods was a great place for camaraderie and I’m still in touch with the people from all those years ago,” he reveals.
Since then, despite the bad publicity the HSE gets, Senan believes his care could not be surpassed.
“I’m dealing with the HSE for the past 13 years. I can see the nurse or doctor by appointment or outside of that if necessary. Their doors are open and to know I have that support is a big thing,” he says.
“The service available to me is brilliant. The professionals really are excellent. I have access to a social worker, a clinical nurse, an occupational therapist, a psychologist and the best consultant psychiatrist you could find. There are problems and cutbacks and everything else. The hardest part is to get the service initially. Once you get in, it is great,” he adds.
Senan joined an Aware support group, something which he says simply “worked for me”.
“I went to my first meeting and, recovering from depression, I was a bit apprehensive about going to the meeting but I was told there would be good support. I went on the first night and there were two people there that I know quite well who I didn’t know suffered from depression.
“On the night, I was given the opportunity to just listen to the group and given the option to speak at the end if I wanted to. In this group, I discovered that eight people at the meeting were experiencing exactly what I was going through. I found great support from the other members and I have continued to go to this day,” he states.
Senan is now 60 and although he can no longer work full-time, he now works a few days a week in a job that is certified as therapeutic.
Despite progress in recent years, there is still a stigma about mental illness, Senan claims.
“You meet people and they say ‘how are things?’ and that covers it. I spent seven months in a hospital but it is a psychiatric hospital so it is not the same. One of the things I found strange was that a lot of the people I worked with, all they ever said when we met was ‘how are things?’ What happened me was pretty public and they knew about it but they wouldn’t bring it up because it goes back to the stigma,” says Senan.
“It is a two-way street of course. People are unsure. This is where an information campaign is necessary to let people know about the illness and tell them that it is okay to talk about it,” he adds.
“A neighbour of mine had a heart bypass recently. I called into him to wish him luck with the operation. When I was in his house I couldn’t believe all the cards around from well-wishers. You don’t get that when you suffer from mental illness,” he points out.
As cases of depression rise in Ireland Senan’s advice is simple, seek help.
“People need to reduce their exposure to stress. There are good stress levels and there are bad ones. If people are going to be stressed all the time, that’s not good. In the early days I knew myself when I was feeling sad,” he reveals.
“When the Monday morning blues are the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday blues it is time to seek help. See your GP and go from there,” he advises people.
Senan is keen to encourage men who are suffering from depression to open up about the problem. 
“If men can be encouraged to talk, they can relieve a lot of the stress and pressure on them but they don’t. They don’t go to the pub and say ‘I was in tears before I came out here tonight’  and they don’t go to the doctor either,” he outlines.
Aware volunteers will be in Clare collecting as part of the Daisy Days campaign this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
*Name has been changed
Keys to the Cage: How to Cope with Depression by Sue Leonard comprises 14 interviews with men and women of all ages, including Senan, from all around Ireland, who have been through depression, anxiety and related illnesses. It is published by New Island and is on sale now.