WHEN THE Samaritans were set up in Ireland on March 2nd, 1970, the topic of suicide was one which was generally not discussed in Irish society.Apart from being an illegal act (suicide was not decriminalised in Ireland until 1993) there was also huge religious stigma surrounding suicide. As recently as the 1970s, a person who was deemed to have taken their own life was not permitted to be buried in consecrated ground by the Catholic Church.
“It took time to get the idea of starting a Samaritan’s branch going and I think it wasn’t hugely supported by the church at the time . . . it wasn’t a subject for discussion,” Maggie Hayden, director of the Dublin Samaritans says.
However, the validity of the Samaritans quickly became apparent. “It was extraordinary – there were 240 active volunteers here by the end of 1970,” Ms Hayden notes.
Forty years after the Republic’s first branch was established in Dublin by Canon Billie Wynne the need for the Samaritans has not dissipated.
In 2009 the Dublin branch received almost 88,000 contacts, one quarter of which came from people who expressed suicidal thoughts.
However, Ms Hayden says that the organisation is not just for those who are suicidal. “We are there for people way back up the road. It’s not just for people who are on the bridge . . . we really want people to be in touch at an earlier point that they may never come to that.”
Ms Hayden says while the reasons that people contact the organisation are complex, we are hardwired in the same way as we were 40 years ago, despite the changing stresses and strains facing people.
Over three quarters of those who contacted the Dublin branch last year expressed loneliness/anxiety, relationship and health issues as their primary concerns. Despite the recession financial concerns were mentioned by just 6 per cent of those who used the service.
However, the ways in which people contact the Samaritans has changed dramatically over the years. Forty years ago face-to-face contacts made up a large proportion of contacts. “It was an extraordinary thing because Dublin was an awful lot of a smaller place then,” Ms Hayden said.
Nowadays eight out of 10 contacts to the Samaritans are by phone – in fact the Dublin branch takes more phone calls than any other Samaritans office globally.
There are also an increasing number of people who are contacting the organisation through e-mail while a Facebook advertising campaign launched in 2009 had to be suspended because the service could not process the number of contacts it brought about.
A text line, which is currently in the pilot stage, is soon to be rolled out across the country. While the technology poses some problems – it is difficult to keep contact within 160 characters and the conversations can go on for days with huge lapses in the contact – many people, primarily young people, are using the service.
In fact, considering that the text service has not been widely advertised as yet, it appears that people are passing the number to one another as more and more are contacting the Samaritans in this way.
Ms Hayden says people can be very direct through text and may admit to be suicidal within the first text: “There’s no chit chat,” she says.
However, there was also a return to the numbers of people calling to the door of the Dublin branch at 112 Marlborough Street last year and plans are afoot to apply to Dublin City Council for a facelift to the premises to encourage even more people to drop in to the branch personally.
“Sometimes people coming to the door can feel really angry, really disenfranchised by the system and nobody speaks to them outside, nobody acknowledges their existence really,” Ms Hayden says.
“I think it’s a really powerful thing that we are able to do . . . It’s just an acknowledgement of existence in a lot of cases, that’s what people want.”
The organisation has not been hugely impacted by the recession, she says. While they saw a drop in donations last year, the decrease was relatively small.
It has, however, prompted the Samaritans to provide outreach for organisations such as the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, St Vincent de Paul and RTÉ which were increasingly seeking direction from the Samaritans due to a rise in people contacting them about their financial difficulties.
With the permission of the caller these organisations can now pass on numbers to Samaritans who will contact them directly.
The recession has also brought about an increase in the number of volunteers as people with more time on their hands come forward.
There are currently 340 volunteers in the Dublin branch while two administration staff and one part-time outreach worker are employed by the organisation.
Everyone else in the organisation works on a voluntary basis including director Maggie Hayden who finishes in her role this year after a three-year rotating tenure.
She says that the importance of the Samaritans in Ireland can be chartered over the past 40 years and feels that human nature dictates that there will be a need for the service in 40 years time.
“I think there is always a huge place for that somebody you don’t know – being able to get something off your chest to somebody you don’t know without any consequences,” she says.
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