DJ Nikki Hayes and author Marian Keyes join Ireland AM for its ?Time to Talk? Mental Health Campaign

TV3 GROUP RELEASE                                                                               

IMMEDIATE: Wednesday 9th October 2013

 

 

DJ Nikki Hayes and author Marian Keyes join Ireland AM for its ‘Time to Talk’ Mental Health Campaign.

 

High profile personalities including Nikki Hayes and Marian Keyes 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.

 

Full interviews with Nikki Hayes and Marian Keyes available on request

 

Ireland AM’s ‘Time to Talk’ Mental Health Campaign continues this week from 7am on TV3 with even more people taking the time to talk about their experience with mental health.

 

This Thursday, Spin103.8 DJ Nikki Hayes speaks about her experience with mental health and what affect it has had on her life. Kathleen Lynch, Minister of State at the Department of Health will be on the Ireland AM couch to discuss the difficulties surrounding mental health in Ireland. Tom Lenihan, the son of the late Brian Lenihan, will be speaking to the Ireland AM team about his battle with depression and Dr Harry Barry gives his views on the illness.

 

On Friday, Irish Author Marian Keyes will be talking to Sinead Desmond about her struggle with mental health. Joan Freeman, CEO and Founder of Pieta house, will be in studio to discuss the effects that mental health has on so many people across Ireland. The Ireland AM team will also speak to members of the Irish Farmers Association on how rural Ireland is affected by the illness. The team also chats to men of all ages from the Drogheda’s Men’s Shed as they tell us how joining this national association has given them a new lease of life.

 

Spin103.8 DJ Nikki Hayes opens up to Sinead Desmond on Ireland AM about the attempt she made to take her own life:

 

“I was 17 and I overdosed. I remember I was in the box room in my house. I went down to our medicine cupboard which was over the fridge and just took whatever I could. I know there was a lot of Paracetamol in there. I think there was some of my mother’s blood pressure tablets and I just, very quickly I think, in the space of maybe 20 minutes/ half an hour, took as much as I could but then I told my mum. I don’t know if it was to try to hurt her or what it was but it was definitely a cry for help. It wasn’t something I obviously wanted to do because as soon as I had taken the medication I let them know what I had done.”

 

Sinead: “And you had to go and get your stomach pumped?”

 

Nikki: “Yea she called an ambulance and I was taken into Loughlinstown hospital so they pumped my stomach.”

 

Sinead: “But you made a subsequent attempt on your life as well?”

 

Nikki: “I did a couple of years later. I was in college and I wasn’t really coping too well, things were happening, I was still medicated at that stage so I don’t know if it was a combination of that but I hit a tough time and I tried again and It was a little bit more serious that time. I ended up back in hospital but took a little bit longer to recover.”

 

Sinead: “When you say it was a little bit more serious this time, I mean, the first time you recognise it was a cry for help, second time round did you want it to be the end?”

 

Nikki: “I think so, at the time yea, I just wanted out, I was hurting a lot, there was a lot of things I didn’t understand with life.”

 

Sinead: “What was going on for you?”

 

Nikki: “Well Dad was obviously getting sicker, he had been given a couple of free years and then he got a lot sicker. The cancer had become a lot more aggressive, I wasn’t doing too well in college, I was doing a course I didn’t really want to do. I felt very isolated, very alone. I didn’t really know where I wanted to be in life and I just thought it would be easier to get out but the overdose I took, there was a lot more tablets involved, it affected me in a lot more of a way.”

 

Author Marian Keyes speaks about her experience of mental health and about her battle with depression which led to attempted suicide:

 

“I went in [to St John of Gods] as an inpatient.”

 

Sinead: “Had you been in a place like that before?”

 

Marian: “No, oh my god, I mean I’ve been through rehab a thousand years ago for alcoholism but this was very different.”

 

“[St John of Gods] was a safe place I suppose, in that while I was in there I couldn’t kill myself.”

 

“I was thinking of killing myself 24 hours a day, because I couldn’t sleep and I planned in incessantly.”

 

“There was a time in my life when I thought it was a person’s right to end their life if everything became too much and funnily enough, having gone through all of this, I would really prefer now if people were given help and kept safe so that they didn’t.”

 

“The only thing really, I mean it sounds counter-intuitive, but the only thing that calmed me was planning how to die because I thought if it gets really, really too awful there is a way out, I can make this end.”

 

“I was so frightened that I told my husband and I told my mother and I told my sister. I asked my husband, because I didn’t want to leave him, I wanted us to be together, if we could do it [commit suicide] together.”

 

Ireland AM's Time to Talk Mental HealthCampaign 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

 

 

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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

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