I missed Sids bumping of this thread and was searching for it to post the exact same article as he posted. It’s well worth reading if you have 5 mins. The attitude expressed by both parents has to be admired. Maybe because one is not Irish and the other spent quite a lot of time outside Ireland their attitude to suicide is not the normal shame sometimes felt by Irish parents who lose a child in this way. Credit to the Times as well for publishing this.
maybe a big merge is needed on the Gary speed thread with this one too.
just on the media reporting, only this morning did I hear suicide mentioned. on todayfms sports news, it was the usual ‘police arent looking to speak with anyone in connection to the incident’ guff that is with all suicides. thats the thing, they report suicides, and make it clear it is suicide, yet wont actually say it. its like there is a stigma attached to it, and if that remains, then it makes it harder for people to talk about these thoughts, as they feel stigmatised and embaressed to do so. tipping kings ridiculous post calling it a disgrace is why these people dont come forward, they would perfer to hide away rather than be called out on it.
but after the sports news, KC who was filling in for Dempsey this morning spoke about suicide prevention, and a website about checking on your mates as you dont know what they are thinking. and he actually spoke about it and said how its better to talk abnd make people more aware of the facilities there for those in distress. First time on Irish media I had heard Speeds death referred to as suicide (and it wasnt even by the news person reading) and first time I had heard any ‘discussion’ on it either. I know Darcy is big into suicide prevention, so would be suprised if he doesnt talk about it this morning.
Darcy was talking about it for a while but it was more to do with reviewing what was said in the papers. Talking about how Mairead Farrell looked on the Brendan O’Connor show on Saturday night then became a bigger priority :rolleyes: He may have come back to the topic but I’d changed channel at that stage with no interest to go back.
Thats some sad stuff there sid but from time to time I get sick of hearing about the good and the great what about the middling, the average and the not so great? is one life worth more than another ??
2 awful cases I was told of recently.
A 20 year old in Kildare out shooting with the father. The young lad would be a bit hot headed and got into an argument with the father over something completely meaningless. Turns to the father and says, sure I’d be better off shooting myself or something like that. Father says something like, yeah go on sure or some throw away comment like that. The young fella puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. I’d see that as 2 lives lost as I doubt the father will ever get back to normal after that.
There used be a shop in Ballymoney in Wexford, small village shop like you’d see in most Irish villages. Owner apparently got into some financial trouble. Drove his car up the Wicklow mountains and set fire to the car with him in it. I’ve often wondered what would go through someones head when they’ve a knife to their wrist or a noose around their neck or a gun in their mouth, but to think a fella would sit in a burning car until he died is not something I can even comprehend or understand.
:o
they are awful fucking cases.
I cant get Gary Speed out of my head.What would lead a person down such a dark alley in the recesses of their mind and literally believe there was no way back.Everyone stares into the abyss at some point in their lives.What is it that maketh the man.You can have the heart of a lion and have true grit,be tough as nails and an inspiration to others but at the end of the day its all about the people standing beside you in life.Friends and family.I have read a book called unbroken which charts the almost surreal story of one mans fight for survival in the greatest of adversaries.then I see the sheer fickleness of it all when Gary Speed ended it all.I hope none of my loved ones ever experience that feeling.
God be good to him and God bless his family.
I know 3 people who have committed suicide in last few years.There is never any closure.People have talked about the ignorance and euphemisms deployed by our national broadcaster to present these tragic cases.I think I read somewhere that by addressing it explicitly that it can almost legitimise the act and serve or trigger a response in a person to think about committing such an act.I dont know how true this is.It is a farce that we are not proactive about tackling the issue.Out of interest today I looked to see what online services in Ireland there was to offer help to people.The samaritans was the only outlet for people or to request a consulation with your GP was the other piece of advice that was mentioned.It is a cultural thing as well.As much of our fondness for alcohol and sport is inate in most Irish men, so is our attitudes to seeking help or confiding in others.I have plenty of friends,We work 9 to have 5 monday to Friday.We talk about sport,work,women,we go out and drink and maybe go away to a premierleague game or Celtic match a couple of times a year.We are uttlerly helpless when it comes to discussing emotions of lifes problems.
a lot of truth in that.
Great discussion lads. Haven’t time to get into it now bu few points
Think booze us far bigger problem now than long go. Way more spirits drank by young people drinking to get drunk rather than for social aspect. Get drunker, make bigger tit of oneself, more paranoid and humiliated the next day. Viscous cycle.
Loads of suicides not reported due of life insurance issues, have spoken about it in early pages of thread, as stated many single vehicle accidents are nothing of sort
Very very sad about Gary Speed, seemed an innately decent man. Some shocking rumours on twitter which if true will add a massive layer of anger and sadness to this story
could anyone tell me about these rumours?
What’s the most popular way of suicide? Anyone I know has gone the hanging route. One of my mother’s friends did the pills, my father found her.
Ah fuck it how could anyone go through with it? I know mental illness is far more complex than that but the sheer act of killing yourself is horrific.
Is it ever acceptable?
Of course it’s acceptable. Nothing means anything anyway and nobody owes anybody else anything.
For anyone who is serious about it then it’s usually hanging from my experience as it’s very hard to get it wrong and in a way it’s quick and easy compared to other methods. Pills don’t give the same level of certainty due to the time involved. Someone could go unconscious but still be alive and be able to be revived.
Never be surprised at what goes through the head of someone suffering any kind of mental illness KIB. Whether suicide related or not it makes you think in a completely different way about a lot of things.
Can anyone find the article Kevin Myers wrote about Gary Speed on the Indo site? Doesn’t seem to be up there for some reason.
whats the gist of it mac? saw an article in it by some other lad on Wednesday giving out about the tabloids muckraking and speed can now rest in peace.
Something along the lines of Speed being a selfish bastard. Only heard Darcy talking about it this morning when reviewing the papers and a couple of people having a go at Myers on Twitter over it but can’t find the article anywhere.
http://www.independent.ie/independent.ie/editorial/todaysPaper/todayspaper20111202.png
He argued that people saying how great he was and giving him a glorious grief stricken burial might inspire others who are feeling suicidal to commit the act. He maintains that it should be talked about but it should be labeled self murder … He feels that people who have felt suicidal and not gone through with it to save their family the pain that gary’s young lads are feeling are the real heroes
Kevin Myers: Suicide is self-murder and must remain taboo
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NO wonder a writer to the Letters Page on Wednesday sought, and was granted, anonymity on the subject of the suicide of Gary Speed.[/size][/font]
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In his small town, he reported, it was even proposed that a sports trophy be named after a local suicide victim. What would have happened to him if his identity had been revealed? For in the strange inversion of values that has occurred in recent years, what was once profoundly taboo is now almost hailed.[/size][/font]
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This is by no means a uniquely Irish phenomenon. The Nottingham Forest-Leeds United match on Wednesday began with a minute’s applause to honour Gary Speed, who had taken his own life. So how does one now hail a true hero?[/size][/font]
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There is, of course, no right time to write about suicide. In the immediate aftermath of one, if you strike a dissident note, you will certainly be tweet-lynched for your heartlessness. If you consider it when the topic isn’t in the news, it has no particular resonance.[/size][/font]
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But we cannot allow the e-mob, or other people’s emotions, to prevent us from talking about this, particularly now, with serious proposals to make Gary Speed BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Moreover, as the greatest recession since the 1930s grips the world, many people are drifting into despair. Suicide cannot be culturally tolerated as a proper way of coping with profound personal problems. I say nothing about Gary Speed. The only concerns for me now are his wife, Louise, and two sons, Edward (14) and Thomas (13), who are the very age when boys most desperately need their father. Not just his life ended last weekend. So too, for ever, did their childhoods. So too, for ever, did any proper sense of family Christmas. So too did any sense of peace and stability in their teenage worlds.[/size][/font]
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Serious bereavement is a rock in the stream of one’s life which ineradicably changes the course in which it flows. I lost my father to a heart attack when I was 15, and my life fell apart. I did not know a moment’s real happiness for the six years of pain and confusion and failure that followed. I pray that the death of Gary Speed will not be as catastrophic for Edward and Thomas as the death of my father was for me. But at least he did not choose that outcome. It is simply not good enough to respond to Gary Speed’s suicide by emoting about what a great man he was. Nor is it good enough for the media to join in this uncritical acclamation. His sons know little of his achievements. He was their father. That was what counted in their lives. How much did he think of them when he decided to take his own life?[/size][/font]
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We do not need to labour over the obvious; of course he was of unsound mind when he committed suicide. But we have removed the taboo from self-murder. That taboo, at least, added something on the scales in favour of survival. How many people – adolescents, say, who feel their lives are worth nothing – might now find the prospect of a tear-filled funeral and local celebrity quite an alluring prospect? Might not such a glamorous end posthumously validate the otherwise “valueless” – in their eyes – life that had preceded it?[/size][/font]
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On Tuesday, the ‘Daily Telegraph’ dedicated nearly seven pages to Gary Speed’s death. Two years ago, the same newspaper gave just half a page to Sergeant Olaf Schmid, GC, (posthumous), Royal Logistical Corps, killed in action while defusing IEDs in Afghanistan. Sgt Schmid toiled tirelessly to deal with bombs that might otherwise have killed his fellow-soldiers.[/size][/font]
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His stepson Laird will grow up knowing that Olaf, the only man he has ever called dad, gave his life so that other boys like him would not be fatherless. Laird might in time begrudge the sacrifice that was so one-sided and so unfair: but at least he can truly say that his father behaved with perfect selflessness. It is not possible to say this of a suicide. Moreover, it is wrong that society acclaims the man who kills himself above the stoic, the patient, and the long-suffering, and most especially above the still-living who have contemplated suicide, but who have decided that they could not do that to their families. These are the real heroes, who gave up a relatively easy death in order to live a far more difficult life, that they might faithfully serve others, in hardship, endurance and despair, when all personal joy had gone, and only a concern for others remained.[/size][/font]
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FAITH, hope and love: these are the cardinal human virtues. They also define a now deeply unfashionable concept: manliness. And since we can, quite rightly, no longer use the crude force of a pagan taboo as a control over people’s lives, then we must extol the positive, especially the moral concept that is the most noble of them all. Not for me, or you, or us, but for others; the concept that conveys faith, hope and love, which together go by that very simple and very male word, “duty”.[/size][/font]
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[font=“Verdana”][size=“2”][color="#333333"]I’m allergic to this fella.He portrays himself as an anti hero not bowing to conventiondom.An absolute prick of the highest order.[/size][/font]
what a cock- even th term to "commit "suicide is inappropiate these days