Whether feeling low or suffering a breakdown, we can all experience mental-health problems. There are solutions, reports Anne Dempsey.

Martin McGroarty will go to the Grow national conference in Dublin today with gratitude and optimism. "People often talk of a breakdown. In my case, it was a breakthrough: breaking through into a new way of living," he says.

Aged 47, one of a large, loving family, he says his early brightness was dimmed when he was bullied between the ages of 11 and 14, suffering in silence. A move from a close-knit rural community to Cobh, in Co Cork, was difficult, and as a teenager he became apparently outgoing: an escape, he says, from deeper loneliness.

He worked in a foundry until an accident there in 1995 changed his life. "The explosion threw me back, leaving me singed and blackened. The shock began showing itself in uneasiness, panic attacks, flashbacks and nightmares. I didn't like feeling afraid all the time; it was post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], but I didn't want to give in to it."

Returning to work after six months, he was unlucky enough to be involved in two further accidents. "In one, an oxygen leak in the equipment ignited, and I took the full blast of a fireball. In spite of protective clothing I was badly burned."

The physical scars healed but the emotional ones grew deeper, and McGroarty had psychiatric treatment. "The medication helped, but I took it grudgingly, still in denial. I felt stigmatised and found it extremely difficult to admit my emotions. I began to drink and finally took an overdose. If a family member hadn't found me, I might not be here today. I didn't want to die, I just wanted the pain to stop."

Finally, his GP recommended he attend Grow, a community mental-health movement with branches countrywide. "I remember walking up the steps to the meeting. First impressions are very important, and I got a great welcome. It seemed right; this was where I was meant to be."

Over the months, McGroarty began applying the Grow philosophy of self-help. "I felt I belonged, began to build up a sense of personal value and to practise what we call decentralising, not taking on other people's problems. I realised that in an effort to build up my own self-esteem I had been a people-pleaser.

"I made three basic changes. I stopped drinking, which I had been using to blot out my feelings, I looked at the way I had isolated myself and I began to feel and act differently towards others. Sitting in a Grow meeting, listening to women and men talking about themselves, was a real eye-opener. Gradually, I found a whole new freedom for myself.

"Today I am very different. I can still suffer from PTSD and depression, but it's a part of my life, not all of it. I am much happier, I have good friends, I am in a relationship and know what it's like to love and be loved. We have goals in Grow, and one of my mine is to work again, so I am starting with some adult education. I would never have wished for those accidents at work, but they did bring me through an explosion from one way of life into another."

Today's conference and a talk on November 24th by Dorothy Rowe, a psychologist, on whether medication is the answer to depression and suicide, both emphasise self-help and self-empowerment for people who are feeling depressed, mentally ill or below par. Although we are encouraged to adopt positive lifestyles and take more charge of our physical health, self-responsibility if mentally ill has been less evident. Mental illness has tended to remain within a strict medical model, with treatment and control still firmly in the hands of professionals, so a change of approach is timely.

Grow, which has been part of the transition, is one of Ireland's best-kept secrets, with more than 2,000 members meeting in 100 venues round the country every week. "We do have a low profile. It's partly because of the stigma surrounding mental illness - you don't want to hear about something like Grow unless you're in trouble - and partly because we have concentrated on developing groups. We now feel in a strong position," says Mike Watts, Grow's national programme co-ordinator.

The conference is called Keeping the Revolution in Mental Health Going. "The revolution is the destigmatisation of mental illness towards a more inclusive approach, which we feel has four prongs: diagnosis and treatment, which then should lead to rehabilitation and education. You don't have to stay in treatment, you can move on," says Watts.

Grow's weekly two-hour meetings, which are open to everyone, are tightly structured to encompass welcome and encouragement, sharing progress, learning the Grow programme of mental health, goal-setting and problem-solving. There is peer support during the week, and leadership training is an important component. "The Grow approach works," adds Watts. A huge five-year research conducted in the University of Illinois concluded that Grow participants used two and a half times less medication than a comparative control group, had less days in hospital and showed the ability to make much more effective use of professionals right across the board."

Keeping the Revolution in Mental Health Going is at All Hallows College in Drumcondra, Dublin, today. Registration is at 9 a.m. Details from Nikki at Happening Creative on 01-6392901. Grow is at 11 Liberty Street, Cork (021-4277520), with offices countrywide

Helping yourself

Dorothy Rowe, a clinical psychologist and the best-selling author of Depression: The Way Out Of Prison and Beyond Fear, is speaking in Dublin on November 24th on ways of helping yourself if you are feeling below par psychologically.

"Psychiatry now accepts that such people can benefit from therapy, and many medical professionals are doing some counselling training themselves," she says.

"All I talk and write about is based on research, understanding the way people make sense of their lives. We all deal with things subjectively, based on our own experiences. When something happens, you can have all kinds of emotions churning round.

"Putting it into words, explaining to someone, writing a letter, a poem, can help you clarify and give you a distance from it. The supportive role of ordinary people, friends, family is now recognised; it was Wordsworth who described poetry as emotion remembered.

"My aim is to help people devise a strategy for looking after themselves, recognise the situations that make them vulnerable and see what they can change. If, for example, contacting your mother puts you in a bad mood, you might not phone her every day: do it once a week.

"I am not one of those therapists who believes that talking about childhood of itself lances the psychic wound. In childhood we came to various conclusions, and it is important as an adult to check these out to see if they are still valid. For example, as a child it may not have been safe to show anger. Now you can learn different ways of dealing with anger. Sometimes it's still best not to show it, sometimes you need to speak it firmly and directly, and in this way you make the great discovery that everyone doesn't react to anger the way it happened when you were a child.

"A big, bad conclusion that many arrive at is that they were not acceptable, not valuable, and it is easy to find yourself still reacting from that place, even though things have changed. If I could just say three things, they would be: be your own best friend rather than always criticising yourself, take time to be in the present - see the autumn leaves changing colour, be connected to the world - and, thirdly, be optimistic.

Remember, if you predict misery for yourself today, that's what you will get in a self-fulfilling prophecy. So be hopeful. We create our own reality."

Dorothy Rowe's lecture Depression & Suicide: Is Medication The Answer? is at the Royal College Of Surgeons in Ireland at 8 p.m. on November 24th. Admission is by ticket (01-8338366)