Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Drugs & alcohol a ‘massive issue’ for our mental health
NI expert to focus on suicide Trauma adds to addiction hell
DRUGS and alcohol addiction have emerged as a “massive issue” in the work of Northern Ireland’s mental health champion Siobhan O’neill.
The Ulster University Mental Health Sciences Professor came into her new government role in June.
Ahead of World Mental Health Day - which falls today - the expert, who has worked passionately on suicide prevention and transgenerational trauma, has revealed some of the areas where improvement is badly needed.
Despite the challenges the pandemic brought, the 45-year-old Dungiven woman has spoken with many mental health ser vice users, charities and providers, allowing her to pinpoint the areas in which she hopes to inspire change.
She said: “People are referred to addiction services when they actually want mental health services and counselling for the traumas they have gone through. They don’t want to have to detox.
“The numbers who die that use drugs are the same as suicides yet nobody ever talks about it.” Themes Siobhan says she will be focusing on in her role include suicide prevention, alcohol and drugs, early intervention, service improvement and children and young people.
The professor, who has more than 20 years experience, also revealed the way NI suicide figures were compiled up to now has led to more deaths being categorised than should have been.
She said: “There was a review of numbers last year and what they discovered was the numbers included a group of undetermined deaths, which were drug related deaths which probably
weren’t suicides. We are now starting to understand there’s around 200 deaths every year rather than 300.
“It’s no longer accurate to say we are the highest in the British Isles in terms of suicide deaths.”
In 2018, 284 alcohol related deaths and 191 drug deaths were recorded in Northern Ireland while provisional suicide stats for 2019 indicate there were 197 fatalities.
The fact that addiction related deaths are greater than suicides has made it a “massive issue” in Prof O’neill’s mind.
She said: “Alcohol and drugs is something I maybe wasn’t expecting and yet it has emerged as a massive, massive issue and underlying in a lot of the deaths and the sadness that communities are experiencing.
“It’s whenever you have trauma and people start to use drugs that people get all sorts of problems.
“There’s a consultation going out around an alcohol and drugs strategy. I want to help the public to know that’s there and they can respond.”
The expert said she is worried about how the pandemic has affected young people.
She added: “I think children and young people are really suffering at key points in their development.
“On the other hand I have seen examples of young people with serious problems getting an appointment with children’s mental health services in three days. It really is a mixed picture.”