Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this debate today. I wish the new Minister of State the best of luck in her role. I know that she will do an excellent job because she has a great interest in this area. I specifically want to acknowledge the tremendous work that has been done by my colleague, Deputy Neville, over a long number of years in both Houses. We would not be debating this issue today but for the Trojan work he has done over a long period of time.

The first thing we must acknowledge is the scale of suicide. People do not talk about it. They are afraid to talk about it and it has not received the same level of debate as issues such as road traffic accidents and road safety. Deputy Neville's own organisation, the Irish Association of Suicidology, carried out a study which indicated that three out of four respondents in a survey knew somebody who had died by suicide. Every one of us has personal experience of this. I am aware of family members, friends and neighbours who have all died by suicide. It is important that we talk about the issue, but it is also important that we deal with some of the myths on suicide and mental health.

Huge stigma is associated with mental health in Ireland. Addressing the perception of mental health will go a long way towards ensuring that people who have a risk of committing suicide get the help they need. Between 80% and 90% of those who take their own lives are suffering from some type of psychiatric condition. For those who are young people, it has often been unidentified depression. We need to look at the stigma associated with mental health in this country. It has been ingrained into us as a society. Everybody will talk about someone who is diagnosed with cancer. Somebody with cancer has no difficulty talking about their diagnosis and their treatment, be it in the pub, outside the church or in the local community. However, if it is mental illness and somebody is on medication for it, that person closes down, the family closes down, and they try to ensure that nobody finds out about it. That typifies the public perception and the attitude in society to mental health issues. If we look at the number of people who have a diagnosed mental health issue and the number of people with an undiagnosed mental health issue, then a significant proportion of the population will be affected. It will cross every single home in this country at some stage in everybody's life. The concealment of depression and other mental health problems is a serious concern and is a significant part of the problem of addressing suicide in society.

One in three people have experienced depression either personally or among family members. In the vast majority of cases, that particular experience is concealed from immediate family members and from friends. It is interesting to note that around 400,000 people suffer from depression, yet do not feel comfortable talking about it. It was interesting to listen to Mary McEvoy on the television recently telling her own story about depression. She finished up by saying that she had not beaten depression, but she was able to function in society, still suffering from depression and still on medication for the condition. We need more people like that who are prepared to come out and talk about their own personal experiences of depression.

We need more debates like this. When I was doing research on this issue, I found out that 60,000 people attempt to take their own life every year. I did not believe the figure and I had to double check it. One person attempts to take his or her own life or do some form of self-harm every nine minutes in this country. It is far greater than the statistics on road traffic accidents, yet it is being brushed under the carpet every day.

Everything these days is about economics and mathematics. We have to listen to the expert economists who tell us how to run our economy and what we should and should not do. However, if we look at the economics of two mental health issues, about €3 billion per annum is being lost to Irish business due to bullying. Another €1 billion per annum is lost due to suicide. These two issues cost about €4 billion per annum, not to mind the impact of people who try to commit suicide or self-harm. This is roughly the amount of money that the Government will have to save for the budget in 2012. From a purely economic perspective, it makes sense to put further resources into mental health issues, as well as bringing in a change of attitude.

We need to be able to talk openly about mental health. There is much sympathy for people diagnosed with cancer. The community rallies behind them and their families, yet people tend to steer clear of those diagnosed with something as common as depression.

I want to raise the issue of school and work place bullying. Anyone who saw the headlines in the newspapers today on Phoebe Prince would have to acknowledge that it is a massive issue both in the workplace and in schools. No doubt it is a significant contributing factor in suicide rates. As I pointed out purely from an economic point of view, €3 billion per annum is being lost to Irish business solely in the associated costs of workplace bullying. We need to take it back a step and deal with this issue at school level.

I am also conscious that we tend to try to dump everything on schools and on teachers and get them to solve everything. It is important that we deal with this issue in terms of not only the victims of bullying, but the bullies themselves, both at primary school and at secondary school, and to eradicate the problem before it goes into wider society. In many cases, the bullies themselves have other issues, including family issues, that need to be dealt with. It is indicative of some other problem. It is crucial that there are anti-bullying strategies within the school environment because they have been proven to work successfully.

A proper co-ordinated national structure on the issue of anti-bullying strategies in the school system is needed because each of us has come across stories of parents who have encountered significant difficulties getting a bullying issue addressed in their local schools, either at primary or post-primary level. There needs to be a far greater awareness of it within communities and the school setting so that it is nipped in the bud when it arises in the first place. School-yard bullying cannot be tolerated in any circumstance. If one can deal with the issue in the school setting, there will be not only the immediate impact, but also a longer term positive impact in cutting down workplace bullying and anti-social behaviour.

Bullying has profoundly negative consequences, both short term and longer term, for the children concerned. They become isolated and withdrawn and they suffer from anxiety and low self-esteem. It has an impact on their school performance and, sadly, there are tragic incidents where it also leads to suicide. The Phoebe Prince story highlights that. It is happening in schools and communities and it is an issue we cannot continue to ignore.

The final point I want to make relates to the economy. When one turns on radio or television, news of the economy is all doom and gloom. It is all negative. Economic strain and personal financial crises for families precipitate events that can lead to deaths by suicide and problems with mental health, and we must look seriously at this issue. It is worth noting that despite all the doom and gloom due to the problems of the banking crisis and the way the bankers have got away with blue murder, which is sickening and forms part of the problem of public perception, we have not ended up in difficulties such as those experienced by the Japanese due to the earthquake and the subsequent nuclear disaster in that we have not had any physical disaster in this country. People do not have money and are in serious financial difficulty, but it is important that we put it in some sort of perspective.

It also is important that we start talking ourselves up because we, as a race, are good at knocking people and looking for the negative in everything. It is about time we started looking at the positive. Listening to the radio last week, I heard two good stories on "Morning Ireland" about communities that are starting to turn around the economy. In a community in south Galway, the parishes are coming together to develop tourism by bringing second, third and fourth generation Americans back to Ireland to visit their ancestral roots. This stimulates the local economy as a result. In Longford, the business community has come together and put a fund of €1 million in place to invest in small businesses to get them off the ground. There is much good news out there but the sad part is that it does not travel. We, as public representatives, need to start selling the good news stories. Leaving aside the political debate that we can have here on whether the Government is taking the right decisions, there is an onus on each of the 166 Members of this House and the 60 Members of the Upper House to start talking about some of the positive stories and to see how we can support those businesses. It may not be a matter of providing funding but of providing advice or encouragement to individuals who do not believe that they have anything to look forward to.

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