‘WE ALL NEED TO OPEN UP AND TALK ABOUT IT’

FRANK Staples Jnr is the 28-year-old son of Wexford’s Mayor Frank Staples.

Like Frank, he suffers from the black dog of depression.

And like his father, he is channelling his energies into helping others do all they can to overcome what has become a scourge that hides behind the mask many of us wear.

When Frank, the mayor, launched his ‘ASK’ campaign promoting positive mental health a couple of weeks ago, Frank Jr was there too, to support him and to share his personal experiences.

The basic tenet of ‘ASK’ is that one conversaton can save a life and in the words of Frank Sr, ‘ the first conversation is always the hardest, but once you’ve had that conversation you can get the help you need.’

Frank Jr is disarmingly open and honest about his problems with depression, that first appeared when he was a 15 or 16 year olds and have led to him contemplating suicide.

He still suffers from depression, but following counselling and talking about his condition, suicidal thoughts are now far away.

‘I suppose the earliest memories of depression are from when I was 15 or 16. I Googled ‘depression’ because I thought I might have it, but I wasn’t sure.. when I read the symptoms I found I might have 1 and 3, but I didn’t have 2 and 4, so at the end of it I was none the wiser - do I or don’t I have it, am I normal or not normal?’

‘However, I thought about depression every day. I still do.’

‘My father has suffered from depression for well over 20 years and it didn’t click with him or me that I was suffering from it as well,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t dealing with it. I wasn’t talking to people about it and I just thought is that the way everyone feels and no-one realised I was depressed because I had the mask up?’ said Frank Jr.

He recalls having a breakdown when he was 23 or 24 and sitting down at the kitchen table with his father and saying for the first time that he thought he suffered from depression.

‘I just cried, and cried,’ he said, but that outflowing was a major step in dealing with depression.

For a time the mask had lifted and he was able to talk about they way he felt, although he still says he finds it easier to talk to strangers about his depression than those closest to him, however, this not a given.

At the time, he was working for a Wexford-based insurance company and recalls going into the post room and choking back tears ‘while the lads were three feet away from me, on the other side of the door. I had to hide it from them.’

Another time, when he was due to play soccer, he questioned whether his team mates really liked him.

‘I was really paranoid. I thought do these people really like me? You just don’t know what to do, you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin..’

‘I still suffer from depression. I still have to do things to look after myself,’ he said.

One symptom is that Frank Jr finds very little joy in things.

He remembers his brother Brendan ‘ buzzing’ ahead of a long weekend at the prospect of no work for four days.

‘I was the opposite, I didn’t give a toss,’ he said, ‘I felt emotionally numb.. I can even remember telling my father than if he died tomorrow I don’t think I would feel anything. I don’t feel that way now.’

Frank says playing sport is one thing that helps him clear his mind.

‘I suffer from what is termed mild chronic depression, which means I am not down in the dumps all the time. but I get very little joy from things in my life.’

His partner Maura and 18-monthold son Michael are exceptions and he enjoys going for a walk with his son and their dog in the evenings when it’s peaceful.

Talking about the importance of talking to others, he recalls his mother calling him and asking him how he felt and that it took persistent and gentle questioning about whether he was OK or not from her to tell her how he truly felt, although his first response was that he was ‘grand’ when he really wasn’t.

So the message is if someone says they’re ‘grand’ they may not be. Sometimes that conversation needs to be started by someone other than the person who is in trouble. ‘ The whole ASK campaign is about asking the question and realising that you may need help and that there are people who want to help you, who will do everything in their power to do that...that if you ever need to talk they will be there,’ he said.

‘People can be depressed for years and years.. they can keep the mask up and then there can be a trigger that leads to suicidal thoughts, but we all need to open up and talk about it like I have done.

‘One conversation can save a life.’