Grieving mum helps others in same pain
MOTHER HAS DEDICATED HERSELF TO RAISING MORE AWARENESS
SHE’S suffered an unimaginable loss but found solace in helping others facing the same pain.
Mum Donna Armstrong’s world was torn apart when she discovered her son Aaron’s body in the bedroom of his Blyth family home last year.
The 25-year-old had ended his own life, while his mind was “muddled” by the agony of losing his girlfriend a few weeks before, a coroner found.
On World Mental Health Day, Donna, whose family have dedicated themselves to raising awareness of mental health problems, spoke of how finding a “community” where she could speak openly about her feelings has helped her begin to heal.
“Since it’s happened I’ve become very friendly with a couple of other girls from the area who’ve lost people,” she said.
“We’ve got a community now: we’ve stuck together, we’ve helped each other. I’ve messaged other mothers through Facebook, who I’ve never met before in my life, and just said that I’m here if they need me, and the number of messages I’ve had back saying ‘thank you so much, can we meet?’ is amazing.
“That’s the big issue, when it happens to you nobody knows where to go: you’re in all this turmoil, it turns your life upside down and after that there’s nothing, there’s no support in this area. But we’ve found we can help each other.”
Donna, 53, contacted the If U Care Share Foundation, set up in Chester-leStreet by the family of 19-year-old Daniel O’Hare, who took his life without any warning in 2005. She praised the foundation’s work on suicide prevention, as well as on supporting bereaved families.
“One of the things If U Care Share do is go into schools, from a young age, not talking about suicide but talking about feelings, how to deal with your feelings, how to see if a friend isn’t coping. It’s about getting in before the mental health problems start, before it goes down that route,” she said.
“Things like drugs and alcohol are an issue for adults, but the thing is people are self-medicating, they want to block