Bantry native Noreen Murphy established Lisheens House in Skibbereen in 2014 after Donal, her then 39-year-old husband and father of their three sons, died by suicide.

Speaking at the upcoming Women & Agriculture Conference, supported by FBD Insurance, Noreen will discuss her family’s ineffective battle in trying to source help and support for Donal, who suffered with depression every day for over two years.

The Murphies know too well about the agony a family goes through when their loved one suffers with mental illness, for which there is no support: “It has a huge effect on the children, turning their lives upside down. They suffer indefinitely, and as a parent it is very hard to handle that. It affected everything from their education to our quality of life, and we felt very isolated.”

She continues: “It was very frightening for us when he was alive because we hadn’t a clue how to handle it. Living in fear, because we never knew what was going to happen next.”

From professional and personal experience, Noreen expresses the importance of therapy for those affected by suicide, which is not available on a local level, for which she is extremely critical: “People need therapy locally, not to have to travel hundreds of miles for it. There was nothing there for us during Donal’s illness and there still isn’t. I did an interview about it at the time and nothing has changed since. As a matter of fact, I think it has gotten worse,” she says.

Born and bred in a farming community, the Murphy family knows all too well about rural isolation.

“Farming can be so lonely. There is a big increase in calls from rural areas. Imagine sitting on your own in the middle of nowhere during these dark evenings, listening to the clock. Loneliness is the biggest killer of all,” Noreen reports.

She also describes a certain denial around mental illness: “Imagine to rather die than go to the hospital to get help, because when in a rural areas there is a shame attached to mental illness. When I spoke about my family’s difficulties and the lack of mental health services, people thought I was giving out about Donal, but I was just describing what this illness does to people and highlighting the lack of support out there.”

In a bid to tackle rural isolation Lisheens House has launched “Phone a Friend”. This service offers people a weekly phonecall, as well as regular invites to social events, with transport included.

Call Lisheens House from anywhere in Cork on 023-888 8888, or visit www.lisheenshouse.ie. To avail of support from anywhere else in the country, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or see www.samaritans.org.