Ireland AM dedicates a week to ?Time to Talk Mental Health Campaign? on TV3.

TV3 GROUP RELEASE                                                                               

IMMEDIATE: Monday 7th October 2013

 

 

Ireland AM dedicates a week to ‘Time to Talk Mental Health Campaign’ on TV3.

 

High profile personalities including Alan O’Mara, Brent Pope and Gareth O’Callaghan open up about their experience with mental health.

 

Ireland AM's ‘Time to Talk Mental Health Campaign’ airs every morning this week from 7am on TV3.

 

Interview link of Alan O’Mara, Brent Pope and Gareth O’Callaghan available on request

 

One in four people will suffer from mental health problems at some stage in their life.* However, despite the fact that this illness is common in Ireland, people experiencing them can often find themselves facing stigma and discrimination. This week Ireland AM is creating awareness surrounding Mental Health in Ireland by promoting a ‘Time to Talk Mental Health Campaign’ every morning next week from 7am on TV3. 

 

 

A number of high profile personalities including Alan O’Mara, Brent Pope and Gareth O’Callaghan will be opening up about their experience with the illness and how it has affected their lives. Experts in the Mental Health field including Joan Freeman, CEO and Founder of Pieta house, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists will be on Ireland AM to discuss Mental Health in Ireland.

 

The Ireland AM team will also to speak to men from the Drogheda’s Men’s Shed as they explain how joining this national association has given them a new lease of life. The team also chats to young adolescents from Headstrong in Dublin to get their views on Mental Health.

 

Cavan GAA footballer, Alan O’Mara opens up to Sinead Desmond on Ireland AM about how Mental Health as affected his life:

 

“I got up and I head to this match then, and I don’t remember much of the game, I just remember standing there, standing in goals in a muddy ol’ field, I just remember looking at the ground saying ‘I don’t want to be here’. I literally wanted a hole to open up and take me into it.”

 

“I’m driving along the motorway and I have an image of me just swerving the car into the wall, this just pops into my head! There’s a slip road off, and you know there’s a barrier there which breaks up the junction, I just see the car just slam straight into that.”

 

Sinead: “When you were seeing that image were you thinking, that’s a way out?”

 

Alan: “Yea, that was a way to stop this conversation that was happening in my head at the time”

 

Sinead: “So was this other voice talking to you at that stage saying crash the car, swerve the car?”

 

Alan: “Yea he was about the only voice in my head at that stage”

 

Rugby player and commentator, Brent Pope speaks about his own experience of mental health and gives advice to anyone in a similar situation:

 

“I remember being in a room by myself and I shut myself away from my friends, I felt a burden. Who wants to talk to you? Who can you talk to about your problems? Your friends will get sick of it. And I knew my parents had their own ways of dealing with things, they were strong people and would always get to the gym or go for a run.”

 

“It’s a case of if you’re in a dark place, and again I’m not a poster child I’m just somebody who has had my own problems, there’re people out there I know that are in desperate dark places now watching this and don’t think there’s light at the end of the tunnel and it’s sad [because] there absolutely is, you know, there is a way out for people. Please get on the phone, talk to a local priest if you can’t talk to parents, talk to friends, get some help.”

 

4fm DJ and former 2fm DJ, Gareth O’Callaghan recalls how he felt about living with depression:

 

“When it really began to get bad, when I really began to sort of fall apart - and I was really, really falling apart - it was just fragments falling off me. These invisible bits of me, the little defence mechanisms that you use to cover yourself up and hide behind, they were just dropping off. It got to a stage where the light was too bright, I wanted to be in a darker room. I would turn the lighting in the studio down during the show. I lost my appetite, I stopped eating. I supplemented that with alcohol ‘cause it took the edge off. What it turned out to be [was] depression and I remember the night I was out with a few friends and somebody walked up to me who hadn’t seen me for a long time and said ‘my god you look like you’ve just been released from a concentration camp.’”

 

*Mental Health Ireland

 

 

Ireland AM's Time to Talk Mental Health campaign airs every morning this week from 7am on TV3. 

 

For more information visit www.tv3.ie/timetotalk or join the conversation on Twitter using the hash tag #timetotalk

 

 

Images have been sent to your picture desks

 

ENDS

 

For further information
Ciara Byrne

Press Officer

00353 1 419 3329

00353 87 319 9732

 

Sharon McHugh
Head of Press & Publicity

00353 1 419 3430
00353 87 922 4143

publicity@tv3.ie                        
www.tv3.ie

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