My name is Mick Finnegan I’m 35 and I’m from Crumlin in Dublin. Initially life was good. I believed I grew up in what appeared to be a loving family. However my family were either using or selling drugs. For me I thought that was normal. Sure everyone was using heroin. As I got older I knew this wasn’t the case and that it was wrong. Drugs destroyed the life of so many of my relatives and I knew this life wasn’t for me.
I tried to escape from this. However I ended up homeless sleeping rough and staying in emergency hostels for a number of years. Eventually I got off the streets. Howard Russell from the salvation army helped me get into a supported housing project and it was my first time I had a place I could call a home.
I left Ireland and moved to London in 2003. I thought this is it. I thought I finally got my life in order. I worked for years with the homeless and if I’m honest I didn’t realise I had a mental health problem before 2009.
This was probably one of the hardest of times of my life. I hit a crisis when there was a death in the family and I simply didn’t know how to cope. I broke down crying. I was angry and upset and I didn’t know how to deal with how I felt. I just knew that I wanted to escape those feelings. The hurt. The anger. The loss. The pain.
So, I climbed a bridge in London, convinced I wanted to die. At that moment I was determined to end it all and to escape the reality I was living in.
I got into a four hour stand-off with the police and was ultimately talked down by Major Howard Russell, the Deputy Director for Social Services for the Salvation Army in the UK and Ireland. Howard helped me off the streets when I was a kid, sleeping rough in Dublin. He’s been the only consistent person in my life for last 15 years.
When I was on the bridge, he said one thing that stuck in my mind and possibly saved my life.
“I love you.”
It was at that moment that I didn’t want to feel the way I felt. As if, in that moment, all the hurt and pain had gone.
I’d experienced something in my life which I’d never had before; someone actually cared about me.
Following this, I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and, while I was in hospital, I received amazing treatment and managed to get some stability. Unfortunately, chaos followed as the British Transport Police charged me and then TFL contemplated taking me to court to recover their loss of earnings. Eventually it was decided that it wasn’t in the public’s interest to pursue the case.
When I was released from hospital, I tried hard to reintegrate myself back into society; however, my suicide attempt had made it into the local and national press. Nobody would give me a job so I had no income and couldn’t support myself financially which led to my mental health deteriorating and having suicidal thoughts again.
As soon as I made my second suicide attempt, I started crying because at that moment I realised I didn’t want to die.
That moment in a park became the catalyst for me to try and pursue some stability in my life. I realised then, more than ever before, that I wanted to live so I proactively pursued and linked in with my Community Mental Health Team.
I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to fight it. But I still struggle with how I feel.
More recently I have become a student in order to gain a professional qualification to work towards a career in Mental Health. I’m very passionate about making a difference but the transition hasn’t been easy. Prior to moving into university, I found myself homeless after a relationship breakdown and I was sleeping rough on the streets again.
I was so lost I’d sit in a car park wishing I did things differently and I would cry myself to sleep. Unsurprisingly, this ultimately led to the decline in my mental health again. I felt worthless, like I hadn’t achieved anything.
I started self-harming again and, although I tried to link in with the Community Mental Health Services, I didn’t have a GP. Every time I self-harmed, I was taken to A&E, stitched up and sent away again. Given a leaflet and told to call any of the helpline numbers on it if I was feeling low.
I was desperately crying out for someone to help me and instead I got arrested, spent the night in a police cell and was fined £300 for the trouble. This was after an incident in an A&E.
It took all that pain, misery and hopelessness for me to get the appropriate services to engage with me. I must give credit to those at University, My course tutor and my Mental Health Advisor went above and beyond the call of duty to help me. Not to mention my fellow students who, for some reason, elected me as their Welfare Officer.
It’s not been easy battling through all of this and trying to get some stability in my life but one thing I do know is that life does get better; even when you can’t see any light. In the darkest of times when I’ve tried to kill myself, somehow I found the will and a reason to live.
I have since returned to Ireland and now I work within the national health service in northern Ireland working in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit as a mental health peer support worker. I share my own experience of accessing services, being detained under the mental health act and encourage patients to engage with services and show them that recovery is possible.
I’m not sharing this with you because I want sympathy or for anyone to feel sorry for me. But because I want those who suffer in silence, those who can’t communicate with others effectively and those who don’t engage with services to know that it’s okay, life will get better.
And it’s okay not to be okay.
Help information
If you need help please talk to friends, family, a GP, therapist or one of the free confidential helpline services. For a full list of national mental health services see yourmentalhealth.ie.
- Samaritans on their free confidential 24/7 helpline on 116-123, by emailing jo@samaritans.ie
- Pieta House National Suicide Helpline 1800 247 247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide prevention, self-harm, bereavement) or text HELP to 51444 (standard message rates apply)
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
If living in Ireland you can find accredited therapists in your area here:
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