Another athlete trying to break the stigma

By Barry Rouche

Former Cork hurler, Conor Cusack spoke last night of his struggle with depression and how he contemplated taking his own life.

He urged people suffering mental health problems not to suffer in silence but to reach out to others and seek help.

Mr Cusack said that his struggles with mental health started when he was 15 and he began suffering panic attacks which led to him to withdrawing from his family and friends, prompting him to give up school in his Leaving Cert year much to the dismay of his parents.

• Cusack’s story is helping to challenge the stigma surrounding mental health
• Cork hurler praised for speaking openly about depression

He told how he would wake at night in a ball of sweat and spend hours weeping with tears as the panic attacks became more intense and frequent until depression overtook him to the point that he spent five months in his bedroom, refusing to go out.

Mr Cusack, brother of former Cork goalkeeper, Donal óg Cusack, chronicled in his blog how he experienced a breakdown in his late teens and described how he came close to taking his own life but how the support of family and a therapist helped him on a journey of recovery.

“I decided one night death outweighed my desire for living. I decided I was going to kill myself . . . For some reason my mother never went to Mass (that evening) and it was ultimately a decision of hers that saved my life,” said Mr Cusack

He went on RTÉ’s Prime Time and told how meeting a therapist helped him to find his inner strength he never knew he had. We sat opposite each other in a converted cottage at the side of his house with a fire lighting in the corner. He looked at me with his warm eyes and said ‘I hear you haven’t been too well. How are you feeling ?’. . . I looked at him for about a minute or so and I began to cry.

“When the tears stopped, I talked and he listened intently. Driving home with my mother that night, I cried again, but it wasn’t tears of sadness, it was tears of joy. I knew that evening I was going to get better. There was finally a chink of light in the darkness.” Mr Cusack said that seeking help with his mental health problems required real bravery.

Full Article: Click Here

---