April 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement being signed in Northern
Ireland.
The move sought to end 30 years of sectarian conflict in the region, between Irish Republicans
and the British State Forces and Loyalists.
But in the aftermath of the violence, staggering numbers of suicides and reports of local people
struggling with mental health issues emerged in Northern Ireland.
Hey guys I’m Versha, this is NowThis World, and in this episode we’re diving into data
that shows there’s a real mental health crisis in Northern Ireland.
More people have died of suicide during the last 20 years of peace than were killed during
3 decades of conflict.
But before we talk about the present day, we need to take a quick look at the events
that got us here.
First off - Northern Ireland, which is actually part of the UK, is geographically situated
on the island of Ireland.
To the south is the Republic of Ireland.
The conflict over the region began in the early 20th century, when, following more than
100 years of British rule, Irish military groups, the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen
Army, led a rebellion.
It was inspired by burgeoning Irish nationalist movements which cropped up in the mid-1800s
following the Irish Potato Famine.
In 1919, the nationalist Irish political party “Sinn Féin,” which roughly translates
from Gaelic to “ourselves alone,” declared independence.
It’s important to note that Ireland at this point already had strong religious divides,
as a result of 17th century warfare between Protestants and Catholics.
When Ireland gained independence as the “Irish Free State” in 1922, the majority-Protestant
province of Ulster didn’t want any part of it.
So, the British government sectioned off the six most north-eastern counties of the new
Irish state to create Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom.
In Northern Ireland, tensions between mostly Protestant Unionists, also known as loyalists
for their loyalty to the British Crown, and mostly Catholic Nationalists, also known as
Republicans for their desire to join the Republic of Ireland, brewed for decades.
And eventually, the friction culminated into what would become a 30-year period of violence,
known as “The Troubles.”
From roughly 1968 - 1998, “The Troubles” claimed more than 3,600 lives.
There were vicious attacks from paramilitary groups on both sides as well as atrocities
carried out by the British army.
On one of the darkest days in recent UK history, 14 unarmed people were killed and a dozen
injured when British troops opened fire on the crowd of a peaceful civil rights march.
That became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
And the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, almost killed the British Prime Minister in the Brighton
Bombing in 1984, and launched bombing attacks throughout those three decades on both Northern
Ireland and the UK mainland.
Throughout the ‘90s, ceasefires were declared … and broken.
By 1998, both parties had agreed to six principles of nonviolence known as the “Mitchell Principles,”
and by May of that year, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted in favor
of the Good Friday Agreement, which established a power-sharing government called the Northern
Ireland Assembly.
Officially the region has been living in peacetime since 1998.
But has the population really felt that peace?
The suicide rate in Northern Ireland nearly doubled in the 10-years span after the peace
agreement was signed.
In the 29 years leading up to the agreement, 3,670 deaths by suicide were reported.
Almost the same number of suicides was recorded in half the time following the agreement.
The region has the highest suicide rate in the U.K., and a 25% higher overall prevalence
of mental illness than England.
So, why are more people committing suicide during peacetime than wartime?
Between 2005 and 2008, Mental Health Sciences professor Siobhan O’Neill coordinated the
largest study to date on mental health in Northern Ireland.
O’Neill demonstrated that this mental health crisis wasn’t an isolated incident.
She estimated the cases of mental health problems are linked to the Troubles.
“People seeing body parts, for example, after a bomb blast.
People seeing dead bodies and bits of bodies - those are the sorts of stories people tell
us.”
In 2011, research revealed Northern Ireland had the highest rate of post-traumatic stress
disorder among 30 countries, including places like South Africa and Lebanon, that participated
in the World Mental Health Survey initiative.
The data showed that 40% of the population had experienced conflict-related trauma.
And the mental health crisis doesn’t just affect people who were visually or physically
scarred by violence, but also the children of those who lived through it.
From 2012 to 2015, researchers found an upward trend in children being prescribed antidepressants.
There has also been a steady increase of children being referred for specialist mental health
support over the past few years.
“I think it’s to do with the transgenerational legacy of the Troubles.
So it’s the impact of being parented by someone who’s been exposed to trauma...
Young people who are parented by someone with PTSD can grow up feeling that they’re not
loved …. There’s also higher rates of childhood physical punishment in families
in Northern Ireland where there’s been violence and trauma exposure, and we have data to show
that.”
Similar findings have emerged from children of Holocaust survivors.
In Northern Ireland, they’re called the “Ceasefire Babies.”
Some researchers have stipulated that the impact of trauma may be passed from parent
to child biologically rather than just behaviorally.
“There’s epigenetic changes that happen that put the person’s baby at risk whenever
they’re born.
So the stress response can be affected for the next generation.”
But, according to researchers, there are also other well-documented societal contributors
to the crisis as well - including income inequality, unemployment, sectarian tension, and social
stigma.
First, sectarian violence didn’t end entirely with the Good Friday Agreement.
There are still outbreaks of tension between Republicans and Unionists every year.
To this day there are still physical walls dividing Catholic and Protestant areas in
Belfast - and the school system is largely segregated.
Also the social stigma of suicide is making it harder for young people to feel comfortable
seeking professional help.
“Our research shows that about 15% of our population are taking medication for a mental
health issue, but very few people will talk about that and talk about their experiences...
In terms of our suicide figures, we can see that only 30% of those who have died have
been in contact with mental health services.”
Even if young people do feel comfortable asking for help, however, infrastructure is lacking.
The unemployment rate among young people in Northern Ireland is 14.4% (more than 10% higher
than the rest of the UK).
One report said that 51% of young people say that having a job would give them a sense
of purpose.
And Northern Ireland has been operating over a year without a functioning government, following
the most recent shutdown of the Irish Assembly, leaving health services starved of funding.
Almost a year ago, Prime Minister Theresa May promised Northern Ireland $70 million
U.S. dollars over 5 years for mental health funding, but the money still hasn’t arrived.
Oh, and there’s Brexit, which really isn’t making things any easier.
Northern Ireland is the subject of some of the most complex negotiations between Britain
and the EU - and doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.
It’s so complicated that it needs its own video - but it’s just one more way that
the province faces a highly
uncertain future.