Sir, - The reported remarks of President McAleese and your report of the suicide prevention conference (December 9th) are timely and attention-grabbing but merit a little more consideration. As a professional, working in both the areas of counselling and teaching perhaps you would permit me to fill in some of the lacunae? The IACT (Irish Association for Counselling and Therapy) represents 725 professionally-trained counselling and therapy practitioners throughout Ireland. Most of these professionals currently work in all areas of the counselling, therapy and related areas.
Most teachers have neither the training, the expertise, nor indeed the wish to take on the highly skilled role of counsellor. The implication in your report and in particular your headline is that this is a role which teachers can/should take on. As a teacher who has spent almost 30 years working with children both within the school and outside, I am angered at the facile way in which responsibilities and roles are dispensed without consideration for either the needs of the children, the resources of the teacher or the good of the society. The philosophy seems to be: if there is something wrong in society, the teachers will fix it.
The skills involved in counselling are acquired through years of training, practice under supervision, continued professional development, and life experience gained through personal development and working closely with people who experience difficulty in their lives. To imply that the ordinary teacher is equipped to take on the extremely complex, risky and sensitive responsibility of suicide prevention is at best insensitive, at worst risky to the people it purports to serve.
In her work since becoming President, and before, Mrs McAleese has been a very public and strong champion of the needy and those at risk in our country. Her recent remarks are a wake-up call to our sense of collective responsibility as a caring society. The most effective way of addressing suicide and the risks of suicide, and of working with those at risk is not to add to the already cluttered and clouded role of the teacher, but to engage with those people who are already at work in the field and to avail of the body of skills, knowledge and expertise which already exists. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Reamonn O Donnchadha, Member of the Executive, Irish Association for Counselling and Therapy, Cumberland Street, Dun Laoghaire. Co Dublin.