Less than two years ago, Stephen Kelly was in the depths of despair and tried to take his own life on two occasions. He felt worthless and could see no future for himself. Luckily for him, his brother and sister found him sheltering from a storm, convinced him of their love for him and encouraged him to seek help.
After an intense programme of therapy, the 47-year-old Dublin man, who has two children, is a different person. He feels positive and in control, and urges anyone who feels depressed or suicidal to seek help before it’s too late.
“I had been living in Navan with my wife and children but was working nights in Dublin, which caused problems for our family life. I was doing so much travelling that eventually I had to move to a flat in Dublin and saw less and less of the kids.
“ I was working antisocial hours and not eating or sleeping properly, and I began to feel very depressed.
“I had wanted to get a house and get things sorted properly, but nothing seemed to be working for me and I couldn’t make anything happen. So I felt utterly useless and would beat myself up about everything constantly.
“I had self-harmed as a teenager and the feelings of worthlessness I had experienced then came back even stronger during that time. And then I started to feel that everyone would be better off without me. I didn’t think I was of any use to anyone and would only ruin people’s lives by being around them, so I decided to take myself out of the picture.
“I literally disappeared from everyone’s lives and was missing for a week. During those seven days, I tried to take my own life twice but, thankfully, I was unsuccessful. At the time I just put it down to something else I couldn’t do right and instead just drifted in complete nothingness. I wandered around by day or sat on the beach at Sandymount just looking at the water.
“I was feeling nothing and couldn’t speak to anyone: I had no desire or motivation to do anything as I was totally numb at that point. But after a week, I had been soaked through to the skin and there was a storm building up on the horizon, so I came away from the seafront and was walking to a bus shelter when my sister and brother found me.
“My whole family had been driving around looking for me, so Seán and Gillian were very relieved to find me. But I wasn’t so happy. Initially I told them to go away, that I wanted to be left alone, but they weren’t having any of it and forced me into the car. They took me home and persuaded me that everyone loved me and wanted to help me.
“I had been so convinced that no one could help me and no one was interested in my problems that I had hidden how I was feeling, but all my family and friends had been there all along and would have done anything they could to make me feel better.
“Gillian insisted that I call Pieta House and I was asked to come in to see someone the following day. I really didn’t want to go and I suppose they could sense that from me because when I sat in front of the counsellor, she said there was no point in carrying on if I didn’t want to recover, that being there because someone else wanted me to be there wasn’t going to help.
“It was a bit of an eye-opener and I realised there and then that I needed to do this for myself. Not that it was easy; in fact, if anyone thinks I started to get better straight away, that wasn’t the case. It was very hard and it took two sessions a week for eight weeks for me to get to the point that I began to feel more hopeful in myself.
“I did a lot of talking and listening and got an awful lot of stuff off my chest. I felt like I was slowly rewiring my head and learning to think differently about things, but the weight began to be lifted.
"One of the books I was given to read was called Co-Dependent No More by Melody Beattie and when I was in the middle of reading it, I had a eureka moment; I realised that what she described totally nailed my personality on the head.
“It was at that point that I began to accept myself and the fact that, like everyone else, I will have bad days but I will get over them and things will turn out fine.
“It’s been just over a year since I finished [my treatment] with Pieta House and now I go back and help out as a volunteer, because I wanted to thank them for all they did for me. I was in a really bad place and it took a lot of work to realise that everyone wanted to help me to get better. I am now doing absolutely brilliantly: I have a new job and, although I am the same person, I am much better equipped to deal with what life throws at me.
“I would say my mental health is really positive and I have no problems telling anyone about what I have been through as there is so much stigma attached and it needs to be brought out into the open.
“I would also say to anyone else who is in a similar place to where I was that they mustn’t trust what their mind is telling them as it will all be negative. Instead, they need to man up and talk to someone about it. It could save their life, as it saved mine. End of story.”
