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remember the colours. I remember thinking that I owed my Dad £10 and that I wouldn’t have to pay it back. I think it was a weird thing I thought to try and make sense of it all. I was only 12.”
Northern Ireland has the highest rate of suicide in the UK.
In 2016, 297 people here took their own lives, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
Oisin said the stigma surrounding mental health must be overcome.
“I’m by no means an authority on the issue of mental health,” he added.
“I read recently that in Northern Ireland 300 people die by suicide every year. That is horrifying.
“We rationalise it in our heads wrong, I think. Unless you’re terribly, terribly depressed, nobody goes and gets help.
“You are almost shamed or embarrassed, you don’t want to talk about mental health,” he said.
“There are cures out there. We need to work as a community to spread awareness of these cures, to break the stigma ‘mental’ illnesses are surrounded by, and to show people that there’s no more shame in depression than there is in the common cold.
“I know there is help out there. But it shouldn’t be that we realise we are depressed when we are too far gone. We should be taught to recognise the symptoms very early on, the same way as a cold.”
Oisin believes mental health awareness should be taught in every school in Northern Ireland.
“I think that mental health awareness should be taught at school, in a dedicated class,” he said. “Young people should really be given time to understand these things.
“When people aren’t educated on this issue then things happen the way they happened to my dad, and the way they happen to other 300 people who die by suicide here.
“I would like to see the Departments of Health and Education join forces and do something. Once the public and private sectors get on board and start to normalise this serious problem I think that’s how we’ll cut down on this killer.”