A LETTERKENNY woman who battled severe mental health challenges is now using her personal experience to advocate for better mental health services in Donegal.
Four years ago, Mary Orr suffered a breakdown and spent five weeks in a psychiatric unit.
Mary’s journey through mental health challenges was not easy, and throughout it she described losing her voice.
“I could not speak, I could not eat, I had no feelings of any kind,” Mary told the Donegal News.
After presenting at the Emergency Department twice and being sent home, her family pushed for the help she desperately needed, refusing to accept no for an answer. It wasn’t until the second medication trial in the psychiatric unit that she began to experience a shift, with a sense of hope slowly returning.
However, the fear she felt when entering the unit and the overwhelming sense of isolation and abandonment that accompanied it remains etched in her memory.
Mary acknowledges that she has been fortunate enough to receive help and get a second chance at life. Now, three years on, she feels she has regained her voice and has a responsibility to speak for those suffering in silence.
“You can have everything, a good job, a loving family, but that will not stop you from falling to mental health difficulty at one stage or another in your life. It’s not until you are there that the absolute totality of what it means hits you and I know what it means.”
Mary previously spoke with the Donegal News about her family’s experience with cancer, which opened her eyes to the pressing need for better local services.
In 2020, she suffered unimaginable loss when both her father and brother, both named Willie Devlin, passed away from cancer within just three months of each other. Now, drawing from her own experience and what she described as a “void” in mental health services, Mary has taken on a role as an advocate for improved mental health provision in Donegal.
She said there are amazing mental health practitioners in the county, which she can personally attest to, but the problem she sees is that the services are all “working in silos.”
“This is where the void is most clearly visible to me,” she added.
Mary is now asking what role the public and voluntary services can play to connect with people in this “void.”
In her advocacy work, she is collaborating on what is described as a “meitheal gathering for mental health.”
The event, organised by Mark McCollum, will take place in LYFS, Glencar, on Monday evening. It is open to anyone with lived experience of mental health challenges, as well as families, carers and supporters.
The gathering was inspired by the spirit of meitheal, an Irish word referring to a tradition of community cooperation and coming together to help one another.
This, Mary believes, is how society needs to approach mental health service provision: holistically and in cooperation with one another.
“We need a place to go where people can just chat, in a safe and confidential environment and where we can demystify mental health.”
Mary said she wants people to be able to talk either one to one or share their story if they wish, and to share their general experience of mental health.
If the event goes well, organisers hope to host pop-up gatherings across the county.
Because We Are: A Meitheal Gathering for Mental Health will take place on Monday, November 17, at 7pm in the LYFS building, Glencar, Letterkenny.
