Suicide

Welcome to THE PLAYLIST, where HeadStuff staff and friends siphon through exciting art to craft essential listening experiences you didn’t know you needed. Next up, scuzzy recessionary degenerate post-punk slacker rockers THAT SNAAKE of…

Most people are horrified that a person they know and love, or even a stranger, would feel the urge to take their own life. For many of us, the desire to end one’s self is a profoundly incomprehensible thing as it is so far outside our own…

'Sorry, could you not ask me two questions at the same time?' my friend Dorothy implores, looking frustrated. She hasn't had an easy time of it, but despite that, she is not one to wallow or complain or put up with people asking her two…

My brother called me a fortnight ago, on a Saturday afternoon. He asked me if I knew of a certain guy from home - ‘home’ being rural Sligo. I said that yes, I did know of him. The image of his smiling face flashed into my mind. I asked my…

Dear Minister Varadkar, I invite you, for just a moment, to imagine a beating heart. The sound it makes. The steady, rhythmic thump-thump of a heart pumping to keep the body it exists in alive. Imagine that sound multiplied by 7,000. Let…

This particular piece on cyberbullying has been in the works ever since I decided to let loose writing about mental health. A few weeks ago, after seeing One Direction fans target Loose Women panelist Saira Khan - simply because she tweeted…

The article was written by someone I liked. By someone erudite and more importantly, compassionate.  Someone who understood mental illness. Who joked about it, but offered insight. And he wrote about suicide.  About the comfort it can offer…

Last year, the European Child Safety Alliance (ECSA) found that Ireland had the second highest rate of male suicide in Europe among young people. The report also found that young Irish women under the age of nineteen were most likely to…

MY MOTHER SPEAKS TO ME OF SUICIDE My mother calls me up again to speak to me of suicide. Another young man in the west has committed his suicide. She tells me that I knew him in my teenage years before I left home instead…

Joni Mitchell – Blue (1971) There are times when I wish I had picked up an instrument when I was a child and kept it up until now. Knowledge of musical theory would help me here. I know that there’s a ton going on in Blue. I usually…