A Northern Irish woman has dedicated her life to helping others in mental health and addiction crisis after losing her son to suicide.
Nichola O'Connor's son Eamon died in June 2018, just one week before he would have turned 19.
The death of the teenager, who had struggled with his mental health for years, sent a ripple of devastation through the local community.
Speaking to Belfast Live, Nichola explained how Eamon's mental health referral letter only arrived in the post on the day of his funeral.
Now the mum said she has been educating herself on mental health and addiction to put the learning into practice with her children.
She said: "I am a mother of four, and it is no secret that I have been through traumas in my life. I was a widow with four young sons. Eamon had a trauma at the age of eight and a half months old.
"Twenty years ago, I began educating myself to see how I could help my child. Because of the trauma of the loss of my husband, I wanted to help my children.
"I did pretty well with three of them, got them into sports and a good education. I was constantly reassuring them that they could do anything that they wanted and that they could go anywhere that they wanted to go in life.
"As a child, Eamon was really unhappy and never really bonded or took to do with anyone. When he was eight, he took his first mental breakdown and had three eating disorders. A phenomenal guy, Alex Bradley, from Derry , worked with Eamon, and the work he done with him was amazing.
"From there, he was doing brilliant. His football was just launching, and he was being scouted.
"In August 2011, he took a second mental breakdown. He was a kid who lived on a football field, and after that, you would of thought he didn't know what a football field was for. He went slowly down a slippery slope. I was trying to explain to professionals, and very quickly, I was told, 'if you know best, go you and do it'.
"I was crying out for help. I knew what was needed for my son, but they had the tools to help me and help Eamon. We were just hitting brick walls. It was affecting the whole family, and through my own training of trauma and addiction, I knew that he would eventually fall into that vicious cycle."
Nichola said Eamon began to self-harm between the ages of 11 and 14, which worsened over time.
It was at this stage that she noticed her son "was in a different world and mindset".
"His cycle had started, and the hardest thing to ever be told is that no matter how much I educated myself, I could never save my son. We need to educate people. There are suicides we can prevent.
"Today, Eamon could have been a professional footballer or a plumber. He would have been a pillar for his community. I fought against the system, which was broken, and I tried so hard to educate and train Eamon, and I could see him processing it. But within minutes to hours, he was away again.
"Eamon's suicide attempts started to become heavier. Then the addictions came in. Within seven months, we lost him. It wasn't a case of 'would he end his life?' It was a case of 'when will he end his life?' As a mother that watched her child suffer for 18 years, there was a part of me that felt at peace. His pain and suffering had ended.
"Our lives were ended for the loss of him, but his pain was over. That was the only comfort I ever kept."
After Eamon's death, Nichola set up DAWG, a publicly funded suicide prevention organisation. The mission of DAWG is to provide a much needed community led response to the growing tide of suicides, especially among young people.
The suicide prevention and rehab programme offer "intense support for those in the turmoil of suicide, mental health, domestic violence and addiction". For over two years, DAWG provided a 24 hour rehab for up to four weeks in which young addicts were supervised constantly by trained staff.
"As part of our 'New Approach To Rehabilitation', we found that our rehab programme, especially for younger people, was often used as an 'escape', a hiding place from their unmanageable lives," Nichola said.
"An escape from the drug dealers whom they owed money. An escape from partners and parents who were at their wits end with them. An escape from being a parent. An escape from sleeping on the streets, an escape from their statutory care providers, social workers, probation, courts etc. An escape from the pressures of everyday life.
"DAWG provided three meals a day, a safe haven where they had no responsibilities, where they could switch off and watch movies, play board games and enjoy the craic. Then when they left rehab, they each had to face up to the challenges and difficulties of everyday life and live in the same communities with the same pressures and the same people that led them here in the first place.
"So we changed our approach to a safe haven, but not an escape. We realised we had to provide rehabilitation which provided both a structured day-to-day intensive programme whilst living in and with their communities. We had to teach them how to say no, how to remove people and places who threatened their sobriety from their lives. How to develop survival skills, how to stay sober. Basically, we had to teach them how to live, thrive and prosper.
"Our Rehab now works on an intensive 'outreach community-based approach', whereby self-medicators are required to have 72 hours sobriety before being accepted on the two-year programme. They are initially assessed and assigned a core support worker and agree and sign a contract. The programme consists of three full days rehab per week.
"If you are interested in helping DAWG or would like to know more about our support and services, an open day will take place at Blackstaff Mill in August. We will start at 12 with a family fun day, with a bouncy castle, children's games and more.
"At 2pm, there will be a presentation for those who attended the memorial cup and for those within our staff and volunteers that finished levels of training.
"Father Paddy McCaffrey will host Holy Mass at 3pm and then from 4pm to 6pm there will be live music. We invite anyone to attend, and really look forward to it."
You can find out more on DAWG ''s Facebook page here. Anyone who needs to talk to someone about mental health issues can call the Samaritans on 116123.
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