Aware - our first 25 years
The current issue of our email newsletter included this article, originally written for the Aware magazine, from long-time Aware volunteer Padraig Allen on our first 25 years.
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Aware: the First 25 years
A Personal Perspective
By Pádraig Allen
As the title of this article states, this is a purely personal recollection of the first quarter century of Aware and any omission of persons or events are a reflection on my power of recall! I am totally conscious that many of you readers will have memories of events of equal or indeed greater significance.
It all began with the establishment of the Mood Disorder Fellowship of Ireland in 1985. The rationale for the Fellowship was the total misunderstanding of both the patients and families and friends who were diagnosed with depression in its varying forms. It was then very much a revolving door phenomenon. Within weeks of discharge from hospital in a reasonably stable condition, sufferers were back in hospital within a significant number, having decided that now they were ‘well’, they no longer needed the ‘tablets’! This pattern was causing huge difficulties, not just for the sufferers, but also for their families and others who cared for them.
Another major issue at the time was of course stigma – a total lack of understanding of the fact that mood disorder was an illness of varying severity, but it was just that, an illness which responded to appropriate intervention, just as other medical conditions like kidney or cardiac complaints did. However the ‘Valley of the Squinting Windows’ syndrome very much attached itself to all forms of mental illness. For this reason, the founders of the Mood Disorder Fellowship decided that the provision of information on depression in the form of lectures and publicity in all the various media was essential.
For my own part, I was too unwell to benefit from the Fellowship in those early days, but I can look back with pride on the fact that I attended a group in 1987 in the then Music Room in St. Patrick’s Hospital, which became the first Aware group.
For me this group became very much an oasis in the desert. I was able to share for the first time my own experiences with others who had come through the same mill. We learned how to support one another. We learned about symptoms. We learned what to do if things were going awry – things as basic as making contact with the doctor or Health Centre where we were attending, before things got totally out of control. This was particularly important for those of us who had bipolar disorder, who were invariably the last people to realise that we were not as well as we thought we were.
After the support groups and the Monthly Lectures, the Aware magazine and a helpline followed, and all these activities are an integral part of Aware in 2010. All of these are characterised by a huge voluntary effort with a very large volunteer base. Head and shoulders above all was our first facilitator Dr Pat McKeon, the founding chairman of Aware. The drive, commitment and vision displayed by Dr McKeon has resulted in Aware now being recognised as the leading mental health charity in Ireland. In addition Aware has benefited hugely form the ongoing supports given to it by St Patrick’s Hospital, who in fact provided us with our very first ‘office’ and phone line.
As I write this I also remember the work of Anne Marie Butler, Dymphna Brennan, Mary Donohue (the first editor of the Aware Magazine), Julie and Derek Healy, Helen Sheehan, Rick Quinn and Mary Moore. It is appropriate to remember here some of those who have passed on, people like Gerard Ryan. I know that they have found peace – somewhere over the rainbow.
In more recent years chairpersons like Ger Bailey and Annette Byrne have given unstintingly to the cause of Aware, as have indeed the thousands of volunteers who work so hard for Daisy Days and many other fundraising initiatives.
Despite our successes, much remains to be done. In the last week in January, official figures were announced which confirmed that 238 people had died of suicide in the first half of 2009 – an appalling vista. As we journey through the economic winter which has befallen us, these statistics can only worsen.
As for stigma, it is still alive and well but you the reader can have a role here. Do you think, having come through depression, that when you are well, you can contribute to the normalisation of mental health by speaking up in your own dignified way and showing that depression is what it is: an illness, but a very manageable illness?
We must also reach out to the thousands of sufferers who do have not yet reached Aware. They must be given the message that they too can be helped.
Finally, I sincerely hope that whoever will be writing to record the second quarter century of Aware, will be able to testify that the success of the next 25 years which we find ourselves on the cusp of now, will have matched its progress in the first 25 years.