By Erin McKay | Grants, Trusts, and Institutional Giving Executive
Pieta House was founded in 2006 and is the largest provider of therapy services for suicide and self-harm in Ireland. As of 2018, our services are available in 15 centres nationwide. We work in conjunction with the National Office for Suicide Prevention, the Health Service Executive, Tusla – the Child and Family Support Agency and other national and local services to maximise care for our clients.
In 2018, Pieta House provided crisis intervention counselling for more than 6,500 people nationwide. We have seen significant growth in client numbers so far in our 5 Dublin centres with 3,152 people accessing our services in the first 11 months of 2018. We expect to provide crisis counselling to 1,000 more clients in 2018 in comparison to 2017 totals.
Pieta House provided suicide bereavement counselling in 376 cases between January 2018 and November 2018. Bereavement support service users access the service through contact with our helpline, Pieta House centres, or our Suicide Bereavement Liaison Service. 3,587 hours of bereavement counselling were delivered in 2017 and 4,130 hours in the first ten months of 2018.
Between January 2018 and December 2018, we received over 14,118 calls to our helpline. Of those calls, more than half were referred on to further services within Pieta. Of those who had been referred, the majority were referred on to counselling in Pieta House Tallaght. Of the 14,118 who called, 3,560 were first time callers. The two main presenting conditions of the callers were those suffering from depression and anxiety. Of the callers who were expressing suicidal ideation, 1007 stated that they had attempted suicide in the past.
This year, the GAA, IRFU, Connaught Rugby, and Pieta House has held a number of high-profile events signposting vulnerable people and their support network to contact our services if they need help or guidance. For the last five years, we have teamed up with St Patrick’s Mental Health Services to co-host a Self-Harm Awareness Conference. This is Ireland’s first ever conference dedicated to the topic of self-harm and explores what we know, what we don’t know and what direction need to be taken. In October 2018, Pieta House collaborated with Lyons Tea to host “Now We’re Talking,” a panel discussion directed towards young people which worked to destigmatize mental health and encourage people to talk and seek help when needed. In November 2018, our former CEO Brian Higgins spoke on a panel at Zeminar, a convention geared towards secondary students encouraging young people to combat stigma and addressed bullying in schools. Our “Feel Good Week” campaign was a national initiative to encourage social connection and to encourage feel good and healthy habits, which increase resilience and lower a person’s risk of suicide.
Pieta House uses its digital voice to support people who may be struggling with thoughts of suicide, be engaging in self-harm or are concerned about another person. We regularly engage with our 200,000 Facebook followers, 38,000 Twitter followers, and 13,000 Instagram followers.
Your generous support makes our life saving work possible. Thank you for giving the gift of hope in 2018!
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