Pieta House – “Centre for the Prevention of Self-Harm or Suicide”
Our official name is Pieta House – the Centre for
the Prevention of Self-Harm or Suicide, and we do exactly as the name
suggests. We help people who have tried to take their lives before, we help
people who are thinking about it, and we also help those who self-harm. Often
we would get phone calls from people looking for bereavement counselling as a
result of a suicide, or they are looking for help with depression. But we stick
very much to helping people with suicidal ideation and self-harming behaviours,
as this allows us to be focused and specialised in this unique kind of service.
We are also the first centre of it’s kind in the whole of Ireland – no other
organisation deals specifically with suicide and self-harm intervention which
means that we are very much in demand. Also, people often think that self-harm
and suicide go hand in hand, when in fact they are two very separate things. One
thing about our wonderful service is that we are completely free of
charge. Suicide affects people from every walk of life – the young and the old,
male and female, the rich and the poor. So we want our service to be available
to everyone, without financial discrimination. We have a fantastic
set-up here. We provide one-to-one counselling to the person in distress, but
we also provide family counselling and educate the people close to the client
so they know how to handle the situation, so they can learn to do what’s best
for them. We also have a Moving On Programme which allows people to literally
“move on” from counselling and take the next step towards recovery. As we are a
crisis intervention service, our therapy is short-term. We take the person in
crisis out of crisis and move them onto a more stable place, where
they can they seek other help, with our assistance if they need it. (We refer
them on because it may be that their suicidal ideation is a result of
depression, or bereavement or some other traumatic event etc.) Regarding
funding, well, we don’t get a lot of it. 90-95% of our income is dependant on
fundraising and donations. We have our own key events throughout the year which
provide us with a little money (check out www.pieta.ie to find out more
information) and then the wonderful people who run the various marathons for us
throughout the year is also another source of income. The money that is raised
from these events is so appreciated, but also the awareness that is raised is
so important too.
Although we see people from all walks of life here in
Pieta House, there would be slightly more women than men that would avail of
our service. The ratio is roughly 60:40 women to men. And, shockingly, almost
30% of the clients we have are under the age of 18. Luckily, our wonderful,
free service is becoming more accessible to those in need – in addition to our
main centre in Lucan, we have two outreach centres in Dublin (Tallaght and
Finglas) and we recently opened another full time centre in Ballyfermot. And we
are proud to announce that at the beginning of February we opened a brand new,
purpose built centre just outside Limerick City, making us a national
organisation.
If you would like to donate to Pieta House, make an
appointment to see someone, or you’d just like to find out more information,
please feel free to do so. Contact details: Pieta House, Dublin
01-6010000, Pieta House Mid-West 061-484444, web: www.pieta.ie or email
mary@pieta.ie
