Martin
Martin's problems began with two workplace accidents which left him with post traumatic stress syndrome.
"I started feeling a lot of anxiety, I had an awful lot of difficulty sleeping, panic attacks, flashbacks and nightmares of the accidents. My coping skills were really out the window. Every morning I woke up with a fear of everything, of people, of what they thought, fear of my job situation, fear of what I thought myself."
Despite psychiatric help he did not get better because, he believes, of his reluctance to share his feelings. "I came from a background where you didn't talk about your emotions. I never learned to speak out or ask for help. I tried to keep a brave face all the time and not ask for the help I needed. I was slipping into depression all the time, keeping it to myself, bottling it up.
"I didn't want to die but I was in that place where the pain of going on living was much more than the fear of dying."
Martin's suicide attempt was foiled when "my family hadn't seen me around for nine or 10 hours and they came around. I was very disappointed. All the pain was still there. Five or six weeks later it started to really hit me. What am I going to do? I was still in that place where I was depressed but not really able to open up. The weeks became months."
He asked his GP if he knew of any support groups. The GP recommended the Grow Community Mental Health Movement. At his first meeting, "my heart was in my mouth. I didn't know what to expect. I walked up the stairs and somebody welcomed me at the top of the stairs". Inside, he found a group of people who understood what he had been through.
"The enormous outpouring of welcome and the understanding and acceptance on these people's faces - that was really the first major step in my journey in recovery."
He quotes a Grow saying which has been important to him: "I will go by what I know and not by how I feel." When the emotions kick in, people's ability for clear thinking starts to waver, he says.
His advice to others? "When people start feeling feelings like anxiety that they have never felt before, and they know something is wrong, they should go to their GP. They should also know that there are help groups out there. Friendship is the key to mental health. When you feel you are really alone you could be getting a lot of help and support."
Christine
"I know I suffered depression as a child. I felt it was a result of a squint I had in my eye. I came in for a bit of name-calling as a result of that.
"The squint went but it left me with the feeling I was different to other children and was ugly. I remember suffering from depression when I was about nine. I was really, really hurting inside, but I had no words to say it. It was only when I suffered depression as an adult that I realised what I was feeling at that time."
She made a suicide attempt at the age of 16 by taking an overdose at home following a row with her mother. "The consequences of who I would hurt or that I might die didn't even cross my mind."
Luckily, a sister saw what was happening and knew what to do to save her. She persuaded her sister to say nothing to her parents. "I realise now the mistake that was. If I had got the help then I may not have run into the problems I had later on. I thought about suicide on countless occasions after that. At 18 I started to suffer from panic attacks, one of the most frightening things that can happen to you, your whole being becomes paralysed by fear.
"I was put on medication which was to take over my life for seven years. I became totally addicted. My life took on a vicious cycle of phobias and obsessional thinking behaviour.
"In my early 20s I ended up in a psychiatric hospital because of my on-going suicidal thoughts. I felt suicide was the only hope: anything was better than the pain I was in and suicide was the only way out." Her admission to the hospital meant that "the secret was out. Everyone knew I was sick, and for me that was the greatest relief of my life".
She went to a Grow meeting at the insistence of her mother and husband. The first night a woman gave a personal testimony. To her surprise she found the story was very like her own. "She ended her story with, `you can and will become completely well'. Nobody had told me in the six or seven years I had been going through the system that I could be well."
The message she most wants to get across is that people can get well. Too much emphasis, she believes, is put on mental illness and mental distress and not enough on the fact people get better.
Michael
"I was abused by a neighbour. It was one of those things that was not spoken about at that time. My father got TB in the early 1950s and that isolated us at the time as well. We were shunned and taken out of school. I had a lack of confidence, a sense of failure. I never had a trust in anyone. It came to a head about five or six years ago."
The crisis came around the time there was a lot of publicity about mistreatment of children in Artane Industrial School. Michael had a relative who worked there. "It was on my mind would his name be mentioned. There was a sense of something terrible going to happen." His relative's name never came up.
He decided to kill himself six weeks before he made the attempt and felt a sense of relief after making the decision. This, he says, is why people often say someone who committed suicide seemed to be in good form in the days or weeks leading up to it. "Anyone around me would say you are back to yourself again. I would smile to myself and say if they only knew."
That he was found in time to save his life "was a complete accident". He was found by "somebody I never thought would have come upon me".
Five weeks in a psychiatric hospital followed. He spent more than six months "on medication going around like a zombie" before he started going to Grow. "The fact that people meet as a group with similar experiences is a great support."
He began to make progress "once I realised I had control of what I could do and say". He has no doubt that one of the factors leading to his suicide attempt was that "I kept things to myself. You couldn't admit you weren't good. That was one of the biggest problems. Big boys don't cry."
He would like to see a programme in schools - perhaps in transition year - to help students face up to emotional distress and depression in later years.
"People need to talk about it. A trouble shared is a trouble halved. You realise then that other people have the same problem as yourself. None of these problems are new or exclusive. I thought I was the only one until I discovered there were thousands like me."
The names have been changed. All are involved in Grow, the community mental health movement.