10/08/2023
EMAIL SENT IN TO THE PAGE.
To the editor,
There is a spiralling mental health crisis in Irish society that is a product of state neglect and an economy structured for the haves, with the hath-nots either emigrating or forced to contend with a stagnating society at home.
Fontaines D.C. released their third album “Skinty Fia” last year – a lament to Ireland and a lambasting of the political establishment. Its arguable stand-out song "I Love You" contains the following lyric;
"Every young man wants to die
Say it to the man who profits, and the bastard walks by"
These lyrics pertain a harrowing relevance to our community, as there has been a deeply unsettling pattern of su***de in Monaghan in the last fortnight. We must understand these deaths not as isolated phenomenon, but in a context of a social system that is continuously worsening for the majority.
CAMHS waiting lists are lengthening, mental health and public services generally are pushed to the brink, and an ever-worsening housing crisis forces our young to distant lands. Death by su***de must be understood as a social phenomenon – not an isolated act that occurs in a vacuum. The pressure is building in Irish society, with social crisis compounding upon social crisis.
If we want to get to the root as to why these deaths are happening, we have to identify how systemic exploitation, oppression and state neglect are dominant contributing factors. We must politicise mental illness, we must move it away from being understood and perceived at the individual level, and actually struggle to understand it in its totality; as a social and political phenomenon.
When we begin to do so, we can develop action plans and actually move beyond the realm of simply discussing mental illness, to being active participants to liberate ourselves from the conditions that make us both mentally and physically ill. To do so is a matter of urgency; it’s a matter of life and death.
Signed in anger,
Finn McKenna
This was published in The Northern Standard today also
