As suicide rates in northern Ireland continue to rise sharply, taxi drivers in Derry are being trained to help save lives. Mary O'Harareports
Driving his taxi around the city of Derry, Eamon O'Donnell recounts a story about a cabbie travelling over one of the two bridges that cross the river Foyle. The driver, O'Donnell says, spots a man perched on the railings, ready to plunge into the water. He stops his taxi, approaches the man, and after having no luck persuading him not to jump, physically pulls him back on to the pavement.
A fight ensues as the man struggles to get back to the railings to complete his suicide attempt, but the driver keeps him on the pavement until he is certain of the man's safety. Unfortunately, O'Donnell says, such incidents are "an all too familiar experience for taxi drivers in the city" and this is why, as chairman of North West Taxi Proprietors (NWTP), he has set up a community suicide-prevention initiative, Taxi Watch.
With the help of a small amount of funding, including €6,000 (£4,000) from the ESB in the Republic, O'Donnell established a scheme that involves drivers being trained in counselling skills to help identify people at risk of attempting suicide and, where possible, talk them out of it.
The drivers are also issued with "rescue kits" that can be stored easily in the taxis and used if the driver comes across an incident. The kits contain first aid equipment, as well as a "throw line" that, if grabbed by someone in the water, can be used to pull them to shore. O'Donnell has persuaded volunteers at the city's sub aqua club to train the drivers, without charge, to use the equipment, as well as learn basic first aid.
O'Donnell says the kits and the training mean drivers will no longer have to look on helplessly if they see someone go in the river.
"It is a unique project coming out of Derry," he says proudly. Word about the scheme is getting out, he says, with interest being shown in other parts of northern Ireland and by the Scottish executive.
In the 1990s, Derry earned itself the dubious title of Suicide City, not because it had the highest rate of suicide in northern Ireland - at 8.8 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 15.1 on average for the rest of the region, it is by no means the worst - but because the Foyle affords people the opportunity to try to take their lives in a spur-of-the-moment, very public way.
The name also stuck because the Foyle is one of the fastest flowing rivers in Europe, and once in it a person can be swept away in a matter of minutes, leaving very little time for emergency services to respond.
According to Paddy Wilson, of Foyle Search and Rescue, a charity established 14 years ago as a suicide- prevention initiative after founder volunteers lost someone they knew through suicide in the river, the Taxi Watch scheme is just another example of how local people can respond creatively and in a practical way to a local problem.
"Prior to 1993, there were 25-30 lives lost to the river per year," he says. "The statistics speak for themselves. Over the 14 years, Foyle Search and Rescue have stopped over 1,000 people from taking their lives. We have taken 74 people out alive from the water."
Wilson sees Taxi Watch as "more eyes and ears around the city" and as an asset to the work the volunteers in his organisation do. It is because drivers are often at the scene of an incident at the moment people jump that the scheme is likely to prove successful, he says.
"Time is of the essence," O'Donnell says. "If we have taxis with equipment, then those taxis can just stop and throw the lifeline. We could get people to hold on to the lifelines until more professional help arrives."
The drivers insist that they know their limitations. "We are out there and seeing it," says Hugh Kearney, one of the taxi drivers who has been trained. "We're not trying to be professional psychologists. I have seen someone that's trying to . You've got to know what you are doing."
Knowing your limits is crucial, according to O'Donnell. "We are not professional lifeguards, we are not Foyle Search and Rescue," he says. "What we want to do is complement all the other services out there. We are filling a gap."
The opportunities for taxi drivers to intervene come in three discrete phases. The first is when a passenger is in a taxi. If someone appears distressed, Kearney says, the counselling training drivers have been given comes in to play. "Taxi men do listen, believe it or not," he says. "We pick up things. We're sizing people up. Maybe you get it wrong, but maybe you get it right."
The second opportunity comes when driving around the city, often late at night, when people are more likely to be drunk and vulnerable, and drivers spot them at the river's edge or on the railings, and use their training to try to talk them down.
The ultimate intervention comes when someone is already in the river. This is where the taxi drivers hope that the rescue kits and throw lines, which were specially designed for them, will come in to their own.
The Taxi Watch drivers admit that no matter how good the training or the equipment, inherent risks remain, and that situations can arise that challenge even the best trained volunteer. "Health and safety will tell us that at all times the safety of the person in Taxi Watch is paramount," says O'Donnell. "But if the person is drunk and there is no talking to them, drivers have just grabbed them by the scruff and pulled them down."
Barry McGale, regional suicide awareness co-ordinator for the local health board, is responsible for running the training programme known as Asist (applied suicide intervention skills training) and has championed the Taxi Watch initiative. He believes the project emerged because local people - and particularly bereaved families - were fed up waiting for statutory bodies to act.
"When I first came here, there was no money to do anything around suicide prevention," he recalls. "But we had a lot of concerned people. We started working together."
Established five months ago, the Taxi Watch scheme is still in its infancy. Forty rescue kits have been distributed and O'Donnell is hoping they can attract funding from within northern Ireland to keep it going.
Whether the project can make a significant dent in suicide and attempted suicide rates remains to be seen. But for the drivers taking part, doing it at all is what matters.
"You may only save one out of 10. But you know what? It doesn't matter. We've tried. A wee bit's better than nothing," says Kearney.