A
place to stop…and think
By
Amanda Blinkhorn ~
editorial@islingtonexpress.co.uk
~ July
05 2002
Two
Samaritans hope their new respite centre will bring down the high
suicide rates in Camden and Islington.
Suicide rates in
Camden and Islington are among the highest in the country – 15 people
out of every 100,000 in the area killed themselves last year, compared
with an average of nine per 100,000 for the rest of the country. And no
one knows why.
Paddy Bazeley may
not know the answer either, but she does offer a solution – a safe
place to go to when the outside world is too much to bear.
It sounds simple
because Paddy has come up with that rare thing – a straightforward,
practical solution to a hugely complicated problem.
People who feel
suicidal often have nowhere to go just to sit and think. “A lot of
people say they don’t want to kill themselves, but they just don’t
know how to go on living,” says Paddy.
She should know.
She has been involved with the Samaritans for 30 years – first as a
volunteer then professionally – though Maytree is a completely
separate organisation.
She has spent
more hours than she cares to remember talking to people who felt like
killing themselves.
Four she knows of
did, others may have done. One never really knows what happens after the
phone is put down.
While some people
need to be in hospital and are willing to go, others don’t. “What is
shocking is that something like 75 per cent of people who kill
themselves have not been in touch with the mental health services at
all,” she says.
They are the
people for whom Maytree Trust will be for; people who, for whatever
reason, do not seek official help.
The Maytree
Respite Centre will be a retreat in the purest sense of the word,
somewhere to go when you literally can’t face the world. People can
refer themselves or be referred by GPs, psychiatrists, frantic friends
or desperate mothers. How often have we read of people who knew someone
was suicidal but didn’t know how to help?
The house will be
staffed by at least two people – one professional, one volunteer –
at all times. Paddy has a team of financial and professional
heavyweights backing her, including Professor Keith Hawton, director of
the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University, and she is
actively recruiting volunteers to help run the house. Stays will be
limited to four days, but after that, she hopes, people will have the
courage to seek more help. Most importantly, although Maytree will keep
records, the service will be completely confidential.
The house, in
Finsbury Park, has already been bought and paid for and is being
refurbished. It is, says Paddy, a beautiful place and will soon be
filled with sunshine and, dare she say it, laughter. A sense of humour,
she says, when you are desperate, is often a life-saver.
Sir Harry
Solomon, chairman of Hillsdown Holdings in Hampstead High Street, who
made his fortune from canned food, is backing the project with a
donation from his Heathside Charitable Trust because, he says: “I
thought it was such a wonderful idea. It’s literally saving lives.
There seems to be nowhere else like it where people can go and get
counselling to get their lives back together.”
Paddy and her
fellow Samaritan and trust chairman, Michael Knight, who lives in
Belsize Park, know it will work because they have both seen people on
the verge of killing themselves who, after talking about their problems,
are willing and able to face another day.
“Sometimes you
see people change in a matter of hours,” says Michael. The trouble,
explains Paddy, is that the Samaritans, much as it may like to, cannot
offer overnight or residential care.
“It’s about
being taken seriously,” she explains. “I really think they just need
to be in a safe place for a while where they are treated in a
non-judgmental way, where they can have somebody to talk to who takes
them seriously.
“Some
people are very, very anti-hospital because they are afraid they will
never get out again. They fear the loss of control. Most people don’t
want to kill themselves, but they don’t know what else to do.”
Original
Story
from Highbury and Islington Express
|
