Published in The Donegal News on 25th March 2008. Written by Kate Heaney.

“A Donegal based author this week launched a thought-provoking book exploring why thousands of young males have died by suicide in Ireland in the past 20 years.

In “Preventable Death – The scandal of male suicide in modern Ireland”, Phil Mac Giolla Bhain looks at what can be done to end this “tolerated serial killer”.

In the book the Gortahork based author looks at why it is predominantly young men who are taking their own lives and what might be done to prevent it.

Before completing the book, Phil, a campaigning journalist and qualified social worker, traveled the length and breadth of Ireland listening to the stories from heart-broken families.

He also spoke to professional experts in the field who, despite years of research, cannot answer why the suicide rate among young men is so high here.

The Introduction to the book is written by journalist and author John Waters.

As the book develops through the chapters he puts forward an analysis as to why this is a killer of men and not women in modern Ireland.

Speaking to the Donegal News this week Phil explained the reason he felt driven to write this book was because, over the last few years, he realised that no one else was going to write it.

“It had to be written. In 2001 I wrote an article on male suicide for Magill magazine. The article was considered in some politically correct circles as “an attack on women”.

“It wasn’t an attack on women, but it was an assault on feminism. It is as dangerous to criticise the country’s new state religion, as it was to question the country’s old religion in the days of John Charles
McQuaid,” Phil said.

The article was entitled “The Flight Of The Earls” and it later inspired a play.

The central character was a young man in crisis who drove off the pier at Rathmullan.

The Earls had left Ireland and gone into permanent exile from Rathmullan in 1607. It is the start of Irish people being “mere Irish”. I was taken by the analogy between the young man and the Earls. The Earls in 1607 were forced into exile by a hostile power.

Were young Irishmen today being forced into a deadly exile by an alien belief system – feminism?

Survivors

In his research Phil met men who sat on that same pier and idled the car engine considering the options. They were asking themselves the question – continue living in pain or let the blackness of the water
end the agony?

In the book these men go on the record for the first time. One of them shared with Phil the letters he wrote to his three children before he headed for the pier.

“Only the fact that he didn’t want to leave them sleeping in the house alone prevented him from diving into the blackness of the Lough that night. I met with unmarried fathers who considered that living without
contact or a role in these children’s lives was no life at all and that death was more acceptable.

“I met those who told me of such men who were not around to tell their story to me in person because they had acted on what was inside them at that moment of agony and hopelessness.

“I met with parents crippled with the never ending “Why”? Why did their son, their beautiful child, walk to the shed and meticulously hang himself, leaving nothing to chance?

“I met with the well-meaning professionals who seek a method of reducing suicide, but seemed to me incapable or unwilling to ask the tough questions. I have no issue with asking tough questions on any
subject,” he added.

Men’s Movement

Phil describes the book as also being about his own journey and struggle in the past ten years or so to highlight this issue, locally and nationally.

“This book is not an academic work, although some reference to academic research will be made. Anything that is mentioned can be sourced through my website www.philmacgiollabhain.com

“This is the first book on suicide in Ireland to come out of the men’s movement in Ireland. My perspective is stated honestly and upfront.

For ten years I have been active in the men’s movement in Ireland. I have worked for the charity Amen which deals with male victims of domestic abuse. I have made several forays into the media, print journalism, TV debates and written a one man play dealing with the situation in which men find themselves here in modern Ireland when they no longer live with their children.

Phil said it was fitting that the suicide issue that should be the topic of his book as it was this issue that forced him to confront previous strongly held beliefs.

“I had been thoroughly trained in feminist thought for twenty years before I started to question the dogmas that I had held to be true. I had read for a degree in Politics and Sociology at York University and whenever sex or gender was mentioned, it was clear that the dominant vibrant ideas were those of feminism.

“From York I had gone onto University College Wales to study Social Work. There, if anything, the all pervasiveness of feminist ideas was even more unquestionable. All males had to recant. The women had an
air of moral superiority merely on the basis of being female. Looking back on it now it seems so preposterous.

“I qualified as a social worker in 1990 and went straight into a local authority position in my native Glasgow. I quickly realised a couple of important facts about the professional position for which I was trained. Firstly, it wasn’t a profession and secondly, I wasn’t trained. In the absence of any scientific validity for what I was doing, ideology had filled the vacuum. The main thing I brought to the job was that I was thirty-two years of age and had had many varied life experiences since leaving school.”

Phil states that ordinary people can be a major part of the solution to coralling this ’serial killer’ which experts have failed to do.

“Selfish Bastards”

Phil’s book looks at the insensitive comment made by Minister James McDaid TD during the 2002 election campaign to a Youth Forum in the Holiday Inn, now the Clanree Hotel.

It was Phil who relayed the Minister’s remarks to the national media, which Phil believes resulted inDr McDaid eventually loosing any Cabinet position.

A chapter in the book entitled “Selfish Bastards” gives the reaction of bereaved families to the remark and the deputy’s later article on the subject in the Sunday Independent.

This charter also deals with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s ’suicide’ comment while addressing a trade union meeting in Bundoran in 2007. He later publicly apologised for the remark.

“If we needed one vignette to show how far down the public policy radar the issue of suicide is, then in that one unscripted moment in Bundoran to guffawing trade unionists, we have found it from the leader of our country,” Phil said.

The author points out that suicide kills more people in Ireland each year than are killed on the roads yet only €1 million is spent on suicide prevention while €28 million is spent on road safety.

Another chapter in the book tells of Phil’s work with the Donegal Mountain Rescue team who occasionally have to go out to search for potential suicide victims.

“Preventable Death – The scandal of male suicide in modern Ireland” is now on sale though the website
www.philmacgiollabhain.com at €19.95. It will also be available on the Amazon website in a few weeks time.

The proceeds from the sales of the book will be donated to the “Lets Get Together Foundation” (LGTF). The LGTF is a community based suicide prevention initiative in County Cork formed by people bereaved by suicide.”