Today’s News: Abortion disappointment, kiddie guns and North Korea’s chocolatey liberation

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post, and it should be even longer – I have to give a presentation tomorrow and preparation is going badly. But what better way to procrastinate than reading the news? It’s not what I’m supposed to be doing, but it’s not fun enough to make me feel guilty.

Everyone unhappy with new abortion law

The proposed abortion legislation has united Ireland with a single thought: This is shit.

While the upset on both sides of the debate may indicate this is the perfect compromise, for me the fact that Youth Defence and the Iona Institute are only mildly disgruntled is a damning failure, considering that the abortion issue is just step one in their grand plan for banning contraception, homosexuality and probably sex for any reason at all.

The proposed laws update the 1861 acts, reducing the sentence for someone performing an illegal abortion from a life sentence down to 14 years in prison. It also defines the term ‘unborn’; “as it relates to human life means following implantation until such time as it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of the woman.” It crucially also makes clear that the state will never prevent someone from travelling to get an abortion.

The rest of the bill lays out when abortion is allowed and what procedures need to be followed. Abortion will be permitted when there is risk to the mother’s life through illness or medical emergency, or risk to the mother’s life through self destruction. For physical illness it is required that two medical professionals (including one ob/gyn) jointly certify in good faith that there is a risk, and that a termination, or a procedure that would result in miscarriage, is the only medical option. For a medical emergency only one medical professional is needed to decide if there is an immediate risk and that the procedure is necessary. In the case of suicide risk, it’s more tricky. While the reported panel of six doctors has not come about, it will go to a panel of three medical professionals, including one ob/gyn and two psychiatrists. Their decision can be appealed and another panel will hear the case within seven days. It is impossible to say how this will go, or how restrictive this will be, and it may depend on individual panels. It will be very interesting to see if any suicidal women take this route, or whether the quicker, quieter and less traumatic option of a trip to England will stay the common method.

I’m very much pro-choice, so I of course feel this doesn’t go nearly far enough and that abortion should be available on request. But this legislation is better than nothing and nothing is what we have now. The lack of of guidelines up to now has been crippling, and this at least means that it is being recognised as a real issue in Ireland. While I hope this is a first step to a modern approach to reproductive rights in this country, that second step may be a long way off. It took 20 years after a Supreme Court decision to even get some legislation  so the government is likely to try and get the issue off people’s minds as quickly as possible to avoid the anger coming from both sides. Lets not indulge them.

Five year old shoots his two year old sister

This story makes me so angry I barely know what to say. A five year old boy was given a rifle as a present by his parents, and accidentally killed his baby sister with it. I don’t even need to say where this happened, it’s instantly obvious that it’s America. The gun the child had was a .22 calibre rifle known as a Crickett, with the tag line, ‘My First Rifle’. Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the press that it was “Just one of those crazy accidents”.

Crickett

One of those crazy accidents where you give a five year old a gun. What the holy fucking hell is wrong with people? First of all, why is it legal to market guns to children? I am frequently appalled by American gun laws, but this is a whole side of things I hadn’t even heard about. They were able to ban trans-fats for being dangerous but people can MARKET GUNS TO CHILDREN? I genuinely feel like any child who is given a gun as a gift should be removed from their parents by the state, but maybe let’s start with some sort of minimum gun ownership age. That child would be too young to see a film that had a gun in it, yet somehow it is perfectly fine to market actual lethal weaponry to him.

Along with the cute gun welding cartoon cricket they use to brand their child weaponry, Crickett also sell toys and books to play with between killings.

North Korea’s Choco Pie Revolution

I’ve just finished reading an amazing book about life in North Korea called Nothing to Envy, so I’m on the watch for any stories about the hermit nation. Fancy my delight and amusement this to find this little story. North Korea’s iron grip on it’s people’s hearts and minds is being challenged by the South Korean version of Wagon Wheels: Choco Pies.

Nothing to Envy is the story of life in North Korea told by defectors to South Korea, so each person interviewed had a moment of realisation that they were being lied to, that their country was not the land of plenty they were constantly told it was, that in fact South Korea was not poorer than the north. For one person it was seeing a picture in official media of a South Korean on a picket line. While the photo was intended to show North Koreans the exploitation of workers in capitalist society, they noticed that this oppressed worker had a jacket with a zip and a ball point pen in his pocket, impossible luxuries in North Korea. For others it was illegally tuning in to South Korean television and seeing the casual luxury that ordinary people had – nice clothes, kitchen appliances, cars – all unheard of in North Korea. But these realisations and the black market for South Korean and Chinese products isn’t new; most of the people in the book escaped in the late 90s/early 00s, so it’s a bit hard for me to believe that Wagon Wheels are what will finally tip people over the edge.

According to a leading expert of North Korea however, the Choco Pies have become a symbol. They took off through the Kaesong industrial complex, a joint venture between the two countries (though North Korea has recently pulled out all its workers). Because South Korean bosses weren’t allowed give North Korean workers cash bonuses, they started to incentivise them through small luxuries like instant noodles, coffee and Choco Pies, which are now being resold for up to four times their original price. This is said to be part of a growing trend of defiance in North Korea. I wouldn’t get your hopes up though, North Korea experts have been predicting its collapse for 20 years and somehow it is still here. While the childish part of me would love to see a revolution sparked by chocolate, North Korea is not on the brink of liberation quite yet.

Editorial – Female Participation

This has been a rather eye-opening week for me in many respects. Last week I attended for the USI Congress for the first time. It was never something I expected to go to, first because I am not involved with student politics, and second because I am so not involved in student politics that I hadn’t really heard of it. For those lucky enough not to be initiated, Congress is where almost all of USI’s policy is decided. Each member Union can send a certain number of delegates to vote on their behalf. I was chosen to go not as a delegate, but as an observer, meaning I was allowed to watch and speak, but not vote. I learned a lot last week, and not just about what 250 students will get up to if you get them extremely drunk and give them free hotel rooms. That story is reserved for therapy.

What was interesting is that I was able to see the views of people who may well be in the Irish government in 10-20 years time, and it did not fill me with hope. While on the whole the delegates there were very progressive, LGBT and mental health motions for instance were passed unanimously, there were other areas which showed me that student politicians are extremely sheltered and naïve. I’m referring to the controversial motions on female participation in politics.

Two fairly bland and benign motions about encouraging women to be involved in political life came up in Congress, and the response to them shocked me. Not only were students against them, but they declared the very idea that women need encouragement to be insulting. Several women got up to speak saying that they had been elected without encouragement, that if they could do it anyone could, and that the best person was always picked for the job. One female delegate was particularly outraged, declaring to those proposing the motion that “You might have your statistics but…”. Congress eventually passed an emergency motion on the issue, but it was the blatant ignorance and sexism of the speakers during those motions which stood out.

There were several things stated by the opposition that need addressing. First, the statistics. While the famous phrase “Lies, damn lies and statistics” may dismiss them, in this case the statistics are inarguable. Irish women are painfully under-represented in local, national and even student politics. Women make up only 15.1% of the Dáil, and 16% in local councils, despite making up 52% of the population. This level of female representation puts us 23rd out of 27 countries in in the EU, and 89th worldwide. We have just 0.1% higher female representation than the next country, Zimbabwe, and 0.5% less than the country ahead of us, North Korea. Other countries which throw Ireland’s record into shame include Rwanda (56.3%), South Africa (42.3%), Nicaragua (40.2%), Sudan (26.5), Iraq (25.2) and Afghanistan (27.7%). Student politics is in many cases worse. While USI might boast a significant female presence this year, they have not elected a female president since 1994. UCDSU currently has a female president, but the overall record is dismal, with only three female officers elected in the last 10 years, around 6%.

I think it is inarguable that women do not run, and are not elected, in anything near an equal number. Accepting this, I want to address the second point argued by those in opposition to the motion: whether the best and most capable people run and are chosen for the job. This to me, is where the main sexism creeps in, though I’m sure those positing this view would deny it to their grave. If you acknowledge that only just over 15% of representatives are women, and also that only those best suited and capable are elected, what you are saying is that women are not equally as capable as men in politics. That only 15% of women are as capable as 85% of men. I really have no response to this, other than I can’t believe this belief would exist, not only in 2013, but amongst the younger generation in 2013.

So what can be done? It’s not the electorate who is to blame as such in this case. If you were to place two equally qualified candidates up for a vote, one male, one female, I think that the woman would have, perhaps not an equal chance, but a much better than 15% chance at least. I think the main problem is that women do not put themselves forward for election in the same numbers men do. In the delightfully titled study released last month on gender gaps in politics, “Girls Just Wanna Not Run”, authors Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox outline five factors that hinder young women’s political ambitions including that men are more likely than to be socialised by their parents to think about politics as a career path, women tend to be exposed to less political information and discussion, men are more likely to have played organised sports and care about winning, women are less likely than young men to receive encouragement to run for office from anyone at all, and women are less likely to think they will be qualified to run for office. Critically all these reasons are to do with encouragement, society’s attitudes to women in politics and socialisation of women, not their abilities.

Women have very few role models in politics, and it’s not improving. Women are never encouraged growing up to consider a political career, and if they do run, find themselves scrutinised by the public and media to a far higher degree than their male peers. God forbid a female politician be overweight or unattractive. On the other side, a too attractive woman will be instantly sexualised and dismissed by the media, with all reports focusing on appearance rather than policies. However, it seems encouragement is the deciding factor. Studies show that men and women respond equally to encouragement, and that if parents, schools, peers and media gave equal encouragement to both sexes, the gender gap would close. But if the attitudes and determination to slam the glass ceiling back in place displayed in Congress hold true for young people across the country, we are still decades away from gender equality in Irish politics.

Today’s news: Knives, incorrect meats, Apartheid 2.0 and X Case

It’s been a while since the last one but with issue 10 of the Observer done and midterm upon us I have some free time to think. Not to say that I’m not in the office, don’t be ridiculous, I’ll never leave, but I have a bit of breathing space before the next panic  issue.

Pocket Knives to be allowed on American flights

This is one of those stories that makes you shout in amazement in the computor screen and check the date to make sure it’s not april 1st. After nearly 12 years of insanely rigorous removal of any item that looked like it might so much as have a point, the US has decided to allow pocket knives on airplanes. Pocket knives. You can’t even bring a bottle of fucking water on an airplane. They were taking baby milk and insulin off people and know you can bring a knife? I, just, I have no words. They took a nail clippers off me once, presumably in case I manicured the pilot to death. I just don’t understand the world.

More Misleading Meat

The horse meat scandal has widened, and it turns out that none of the food we’re eating is what we thought it was. In fact, the scandal has grown so big that it now has its own Wikipedia page. Along with the many more frozen meals pulled from every supermarket, and companies starting to be pointed out as the culprits, there have been some lesser reported stories. First, in South Africa they decided to test their biltong, a type of dried meat, to see if it was as advertised. While all the beef was indeed beef, 90 percent of biltong sticks labelled as kudu (a big deer type thing) were actually horse, pork, beef, giraffe or even kangaroo. The only bit that surprises me is the Kangaroo. That’s not even a local animal. Were they importing it specially for fake biltong? I also want to know who’s bothering to buy Kudu biltong. Kudu is a delicious meat, but all biltong tastes the same. It also tastes the same as gnawing on a shoe.

The second story, and my favourite, is a scandal about Iceland’s (the country, not the terrible supermarket) meat pies. Like in South Africa, Icelandic officials were a bit nervous about the secret horse levels in their food, and carried out a series of tests. To their surprise  one beef pie tested negative for having any meat in it at all. At least we can relax knowing that’s just some good old fashioned fraud.

Berlin Wall to be torn down

Don’t panic, you haven’t accidentally gone back to the 80s. More of the Berlin Wall is to be torn down, and once more it is the name of capitalism. The plan is to put up a big block of flats where this stretch of wall is, the biggest part of the wall left. Berliners have launched huge protests, so right now it’s unclear what will happen. But seriously, make up your mind Germans, wall up, wall down, which is it?

Apartheid is back, Israeli style

Again, you’re not in the past. Though it would be less depressing if you were. Israel has decided to introduce a ‘Palestinians only’ bus. I don’t think any of us can claim to be surprised.

In better news…

X Case law will be enacted by July

The government actually did something! We don’t find out what this law is exactly until next month though so it may not be quite as… abortiony as you might hope. The legislation is currently being drafted after a week of hearings by the Oireachtas health committee, where medical and legal experts and advocates on both side of the debate gave their view on how the Government should respond the rulings. Just have to wait and see.

 

 

Today’s News: USI, John Kerry, Tony Blair, and tourism

This has been a mad week for political goings on in UCD. I never truely appreciated the UCDSU for holding so few direct votes. I’m glad the public doesn’t decide more things, it’s exhausting.

This is also one of the few times this year when student news and national news has coincided as USI got more publicity for universities leaving or joining it than any campaigns they’ve run. It’s slightly disheartening however that, since we have had to report everything live with constant Facebook and Twitter updates, none of this can be put in the print edition of the paper as it’s old news five minutes after it’s posted. I’m a big fan of online news and I know that’s the way things are moving these days, but it’s sad when your hard work disappears into the social media ether and you still have to somehow produce a newspaper. The last few weeks have seen my office hours consumed by Facebook, Twitter and the website, leaving me to do the actual newspaper by night. I’m like a really boring superhero who’s obsessed with hyphens.

Anyway, today’s news!

USI hokey pokey 

There has been a plethora of referendums held in colleges around the country to decide whether to be affiliated with the Union of Students’ of Ireland. UCD, DCU and NUI Maynooth all held a vote this week with UCD disaffiliating, DCU re-affiliating after 11 years, and Maynooth staying in with an insane 87% of the vote.

The referendum has been odd to say the least. I can’t speak for DCU and Maynooth, but in UCD the campaigns for both the yes and no side became increasingly bizarre and vicious as time went on. Neither side had terribly much in the way of arguments, and what started off as “We provide services, such as protests and Pink Training” verses “Our SU is in a financial hole and the €120,000 we spend on membership might be better used” turned into “This guy is voting yes, and he’s got his face on a poster so what the fuck do you know” verses “USI KILLED OUR BAR”.

Near the final stages of the campaign it seemed like the Yes side finally had the upper hand when the UCDSU President announced an agreement with USI for sweeping reforms, but in the end the No side took it with 62% of the vote. What will happen with regards these reforms it’s hard to say; there was no confirmation from USI on whether they were dependent on our affiliation. With the confidence boost of DCU and Maynooth today, maybe they will see this as a mandate for the status quo. We’ll have to wait and see.

John Kerry says the darnedest things

John Kerry has been on fire the last few days, saying so many silly thing that world has almost taken notice of him. His first gaff was Monday when giving a speech during his first European tour as Secretary of State, when he began praising diplomats on their great work in Kryzakhstan, which the geographically aware of you might know, is not a country. He probably meant Kyrgyzstan. Or Kazakhstan. Or both. Or neither.

Gaff number two was equally delicious. While giving a speech to school children in Berlin about the wonderful freedoms of America , he declared that the wonderful thing about their freedom of expression and religion was that “In America you have the right to be stupid, if you want to be”.

The context of this sentence helps, but not much. I will say that it did seem like an interesting speech. John Kerry probably has a lot of good stories to tell if he could muster up an ounce of charisma.

Tony Blair calls for UK intervention in Syria

Glad to see he was paying attention his last few years in office. He complained recently that people are still very abusive about his decision to go war, but clearly we need to step that up. He learned nothing.

Luckily Blair has absolutely no power any more and his opinion on Syria is as relevant to the world as mine. As far as actual influence goes, the golden boy of military intervention, French Prime Minister Francois Hollande, has started talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding Syria and believes there could be a political solution in the next few weeks. Good luck with that.

Ireland has tourism again!

Many people claimed The Gathering was manipulative, insincere  and in the words of Gabriel Byrne, a scam. But who cares because it totally worked. There were 50,000 more trips to Ireland from November 2012 to January 2013 than the year before and we are rolling in sweet sweet almost certainly American money. Experts predict that by 2015, 90% of Irish retail will be Carroll’s.

Today’s News: February 26th

I’m back at work properly today, but as student news is dominated by the USI referendum and the other referendum that no one has heard of, I’m forced to turn to the outside world for amusement. Here’s what I learned today.

Italian election do-over

Well as I mentioned yesterday, the election between Burlesconi and sanity was neck and neck, and the results now show a stalemate. Burlesconi’s coalition of centre-right parties holds the senate and Bersani’s centre-left parties hold the Chamber. Italian politics depends on coalitions for power, but amazingly the most popular single party has proved to be the ‘Five Star Movement’ party led by TV comedian Beppe Grillo, taking over a 6th of the Senate. No established coalition has enough to rule, the only option being to team up with Grillo to reach the required 158 seats. Any coalition with Five Star Movement is fairly unlikely though, as not only are they quite apolitical, but their success is almost entirely down to them acting as a protest vote. Teaming up with Burlesconi wouldn’t help as Bersani holds the Chamber and the stalemate would continue, so really the only possibility is a Bersani-Grillo partnership. Much more likely is that the elections will be held again in a few weeks.

The victory of a joke party is a fairly interesting outcome, and is part of a growing trend in Europe. Remember Iceland’s Best Party? Their promises of free towels, a polar bear for the zoo and open corruption won them a plurality of Reykjavík City Council in 2010 and made comedian Jon Gnarr Mayor.

Since the financial crisis there’s been huge dissatisfaction in existing parties, but no real opposition. In Ireland all the parties are so well established and rooted, it’s really hard to find to find someone I feel happy voting for. Ireland is ripe for a joke party. Pity all our good comedians have to move to England.

Iran in talks with world powers over nuclear programme

Further bolstering my belief that Ireland would get a much better deal worldwide if we started a nuclear programme, Iran has entered talks with the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany about the harsh sanctions they have imposed to stop their program. The sanctions have had little effect because, as it turns out, Iran don’t give a fuck. Iran’s long-standing ”Whatever, bitch” policy has given them an edge in negotiations and though true agreement is unlikely, the world powers have realised that they need to take a much more generous stance on the issue. Maybe we should “accidentally” leave our order from Amazon for 40 tons of uranium on the table next time we’re meeting with the IMF.

Russia bans “homosexual propaganda”

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov rejected EU critisism today over the proposed legislation making public events and providing information about the LGBT community to minors. The bill has already been voted for by the parliament (voted in 388-1) but still needs final approval from them and Putin. Lavrov’s argument against claims this legislation might go against international obligations was, “We don’t have a single international or common European commitment to allow propaganda of homosexuality”.

I have a few thoughts on this. First off, obviously, it’s terrible, no question of that. But it made me quite curious about what international commitments were referred to here. Human rights maybe? But to what degree does this infringe on human rights? That will largely depend on how the law is enforced, and what is meant by propaganda. The word propaganda is a very loaded term in English as it’s associated with Orwellian nightmares, but before world war 2, and in most countries today, it’s much closer to PR and advertising than our use. It tough to tell whether the frequent use here is a translation issue or intentional though.

Russia Today presents the issue as one of protecting the majority from an aggressive minority:

‘The Foreign Minister said Russia’s draft law banning homosexual propaganda protects the rights of the majority from a group that wants to promote its own value system.

“We don’t want reverse discrimination to occur: when one group of citizens has the right to aggressively forward their values, which differ from those of the majority of the population, and moreover imposing them on children,” Lavrov said.

Russia’s draft bill, which has already passed the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, is specifically designed to prevent any kind of discrimination, Lavrov said, noting that “we have no commitment to permit propaganda, which is very aggressive as a rule.”

Homosexuals can go about their business freely and unpunished, and it fits within the framework of the obligations of all countries to forbid discrimination because of any given attribute, he added.’

He makes an interesting point. The tyranny of minorities is a common concern among the bigoted.

Game of Thrones still awesome

Game of Thrones isn’t back for another 33 days (Probably 34 before it’s online. Not that I’m counting) but it has started to tease us about the next series, first with a goosebumpling trailer and today with this beauty

1xvtzEL

Damn that’s cool. I’m going to try get dragon shadows for the Observer.

Today’s news

I was feeling rather unwell today and working from the quiet of my room, had the chance to actually read the news instead of writing it. Keeping up with current affairs can be tough with the pressures of keeping up with ones own life; friends, family, getting up, showering, and other hassles, so I thought I’d condense the day’s reports for anyone who might have missed them.

Horse meat in everything

The world continued to yawn with the revelation that horse meat was also in Ikea meatballs. At this point, I am not only happy to resign myself to that fact that we are all eating horse meat constantly, but I’m starting to doubt the existence of beef. The only thing this scandal has brought is an avalanche of equine puns. Bored as I am of it all, anything that brings forth puns cannot be wholly bad.

Italian Elections: Topless protesters hurl themselves at Berlusconi

What a headline. If you haven’t been following the Italian elections and Berlusconi’s latest attempt to pervert the course of justice, along with everything else in his vicinity, this might help get you up to speed. The votes were cast yesterday and today, and incredibly, the results are still unclear. Berlusconi, the man who only became Prime Minister so he couldn’t go on trial, might lead the country for a 4th time. Given the scandals that emerge any time he opens his mouth/trousers, you might be surprised at his popularity but it’s amazing what you can do with almost complete ownership of a country’s media.

The details of the Italian political system are quite complicated, but very well explained here if you are interested. The basic situation is that there are no individual candidates to vote for, only parties, and to be the winning party you need to win both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, which are elected all at once. You must be 18 to vote for the Deputies and 25 to vote for the Senate. The three main candidates are Mario Monti, the competent yet bafflingly hated outgoing Prime Minister, the 76 year old law evading sex pest Silvio Berlusconi, and Pier Luigi Bersani, left wing former MEP who by all accounts seems reasonable and competent, and wont spend more time getting through queues of not-17 non-prostitutes than ruling a country. At the moment, Bersani is leading in the Chamber of Deputies, Berlusconi in the Senate.

Anyway, now that you have the background, to the story. Many people are unhappy at the prospect of Berlusconi being in power, and three young ladies decided the best way to register their discontent with the candidate was to take off their tops, and jump at him. Even the most cursory understanding of the man suggests this to be an ineffective deterrent. They had “Basta Berlusconi” (Enough with Berlusconi) written on their backs, but I think it’s safe to assume he wasn’t looking there.

Pope gone

Pope Benedict XVI has delivered his last Sunday prayer and will be no longer pope as of Thursday, allowing him to hide away in some corner of the Vatican until his death renders those arrest warrants void (*cough*allegedly*cough*). We must anxiously await the smoke to tell us who the next old man to tell us how to have sex is. It’s cool though, because he might be black this time.

The Onion calls nine year-old a cunt

…..

I think that’s enough news for me for one day.

Treating Depression

The most common cause of death in people under 25 years-old is suicide, yet depression and mental health issues are often ignored. In 2012, the My World Survey, a survey mental health and well-being of young people across Ireland was published by UCD School of Psychology and Headstrong, The National Centre for Youth Mental Health, showing that only 60% of people aged 17-25 fell within the normal range for depression, with 12% experiencing mild depression, 14% with moderate depression and 14% with severe or very severe depression.

Though great strides have been taken recent years to raise awareness of depression and urge those suffering to seek help, the symptoms and causes are unknown to many students, who when experiencing these problems don’t realise what’s happening to them. As Welfare Officer in the UCD Students’ Union, Mícheál Gallagher is often the first port of call for students seeking advice. “I get a lot of people coming to me who don’t actually know what’s going on. The amount of people who come to me and say ‘I don’t know what’s going on, I just can’t motivate myself to work or get out of bed in the mornings’ and they don’t realise themselves but they are spelling out the symptoms of depression.”

Apart from lack of motivation (all too common among students), other symptoms of depression include feeling hopeless or worthless; frequently feeling sad, anxious or worried; finding it difficult to make decisions or take action; not getting pleasure from activities you used to enjoy and abandoning hobbies; lack of energy; sleep disruption; weight loss or weight gain; unexplained aches and pains; and withdrawing from friends and family. If you are experiencing these symptoms and they are disrupting your life or enjoyment of life, all mental health organisations strongly advice you seek help. But what help is actually available?

The treatment for depression is largely divided into three main camps: lifestyle changes, talking therapy, and medication. These are usually employed in order of the severity of the symptoms, but two or more are often used in treatment.

Lifestyle changes are the most straightforward treatment, though by no means an easy fix as habits can be very hard to break. Excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet and lack of exercise can bring on or exacerbate depression symptoms, and for mild depression changing these can be enough by themselves to lift someone out of a depression.

Dr Anne Jeffers, Director of External Affairs and Policy at the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland explains that lifestyle is the first thing to examine when treating someone for depression. “We would look for is how their physical health has been and their lifestyle, and how they’re eating. A lot of people, young people particularly, who are coming to us, may have started drinking heavily. That’s a feature of student life and a lot of people find they’re drinking a lot more than they were before. Alcohol, while it can seem to help in the short term, it a very strong depressant and a lot of people we would see is maybe the reason why they’re not coming out of a depression is that they’re still drinking.”

In addition to reducing alcohol and drug use, diet and exercise is also a factor. Low mood and lack of energy can be brought on through malnutrition, and the student habit of living on instant noodles can leave you deficient in many vital vitamins and minerals. Exercise is also important for mental health, with studies showing that just 45 minutes of exercise, three times a week, can treat even moderate depression.

The second available treatment is talking therapy, which just means talking to people about what’s going on in your life. Depression is usually brought on by a stressful period or event, such as a breakup, doing badly in college and failing exams, problems at home or financial worries. There are many different forms of talking therapy, from group meetings to one-on-one counselling sessions with a trained psychotherapist. There are different schools of therapy, but all have the same aim: to help the person figure out what has brought on their depression, and develop strategies for coping with these stressors.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic approach which attempts to address negative or destructive thoughts and emotions, and change dysfunctional behaviours, and is widely used as a treatment for depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. Dr Louise McHugh of the UCD School of Psychology is researching an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness based branch of CBT. This approach aims to help the person to acknowledge their negative thoughts and the context they are in, and accept them without letting them take over their lives.

“What we do in the mindfulness based approach is show people that thoughts are just thoughts. Even though we get really stuck in on them, and even though at times they feel like they are our entire self reality, when I have a thought that I’m not good enough, it feels like so much more than a thought, but we’re trying to show how context dependent they are. If I bump into a person from school that bullied me negative thoughts might show up, or if I’m in an interview situation I might have very different thought than if I was just completing a task at work. The context defines the thoughts, but sometimes we see those thought as absolutely definitional and telling us something very important.”

“Even though our culture tends tells us the game is being happy and controlling our feelings, we have very little control over our internal experiences, it’s only our behaviour that we have control over,” continues Dr McHugh. “Often at the first sign of some emotional trigger coming up, we do stuff to make sure we don’t end up in those situations that provide those emotions. You’re not going to go to a shopping centre if you’re agoraphobic; you’re going to shut down your life in many ways. It just shows that when we try to avoid triggers in the world how narrow the life can become. If I have to live a life that involves not feeling anxiety at any given point, that starts to make a lot of meaningful things I could be doing become impossibilities.”

While therapy such as CBT is highly recommended for depression by mental health professionals, there is another option: medication. There are many types of antidepressants available, with the most commonly prescribed class being Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). The efficacy of these drugs has been disputed, with meta-analyses of clinical trials showing no benefit compared with placebo for mild or moderate depression, and clinically significant only in cases of very severe depression. Studies of other classes of antidepressants show similar levels of efficacy.

These types of antidepressant are relatively new on the market, as the first SSRI fluoxitine (better known by the brand name Prozac) was only approved to market in the late 1980s. Until this time the most common antidepressants were what are known as tricyclics, which are very susceptible to overdose.

“Up to 1990 or 1991,” Dr Jeffers recalls, “The antidepressants we used could have affected the heart and were very dangerous in overdose. The good thing when Prozac became available was that it was the first antidepressant that was actually very safe from the point of view it would not kill you in overdose. It was also the first antidepressant that GPs could prescribe at the treating dose; the older antidepressants they were inclined to prescribe at very low doses, they were very cautious and were not inclined to give people the full antidepressant. When Prozac was introduced there was a dramatic reduction in deaths from antidepressant because it was so much safer a drug and also people who were severely depression were getting their depression treated very early by their GP. So there were a lot of positives with it.”

Antidepressants are not without side-effects however. Common side-effects include nausea, blurred vision, diarrhoea or constipation, dizziness, feeling agitated or shaky, insomnia and sexual dysfunction. They  have also been shown in several clinical trials to increase the risk of suicide in young people, leading to a Black Box warning on SSRIs in the United States warning of this risk. There has also been a clinical trial of an SSRI on healthy volunteers (individuals with no reported depression) in which they began reporting suicidal feelings once on the drug.

Dr Jeffers dismisses these reports of severe side-effects, saying that “people who have severe or moderate depression will also find they can take these medications without experiencing many side effects, so it’s not true to say they’ve a lot. I know some medication that psychiatrists use are associated with side effects, but generally with antidepressants the people who really need them find they can take them without even noticing they’re taking anything.”

Dr  David Healy, on the other hand, has a very different view of the risk of taking antidepressants. Originally from Dublin, Dr Healy is a professor in Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine, Wales, and well known for his outspoken views on the dangers of pills, and of SSRIs in particular. “The way that antidepressants get brought to the market is companies have to put them through clinical trials to show that they work, but the testing procedures we have, that the clinical trials use;  if we were to use them for alcohol, we could put alcohol on the market as an antidepressant. You could show that it works just as well as Prozac, the trials don’t prove that these drugs are antidepressant in the way you think they are,” he explains.

“The trials show that the drugs beat placebo, and on the rating scales they use alcohol would be just as good in a sense. When you go to your doctor and are given an SSRI to normalise things like chemical imbalance, you could be taking alcohol as well and it would be as likely to normalise things and as likely to put the chemicals right. But you and I know, and most people know, that alcohol actually gives you a chemical imbalance rather than putting them right, and it’s the same with the SSRIs. The alcohol in the 6-8 week trials that are used to bring SSRIs to the market wouldn’t show up as causing people to commit suicide, SSRIs do; it wouldn’t show up as causing people to become violent, the SSRIs do.”

Even the commonplace side effects such as the sexual dysfunction which accompanies use of antidepressants can be devastating, as Dr Healy describes. “The SSRIs wipe out your sex life, most people can’t function when they’re on them, either men or women, and for some people that can be permanent even after you stop the treatment … The effect of the SSRIs on your ability to make love is visible on clinical trials that last only one or two days; it’s great and obvious. Compared to alcohol, the problems with the SSRIs show up earlier on than they do with alcohol, but the point I’m trying to make is that while alcohol gives a relative clean bill of health as regards the side effects it causes in a trial lasting six to eight weeks, you and I know that being on this stuff for months and years is going to cause you problems. You have to assume that the SSRIs are going to cause the same or more.”

Despite their disagreement on the severity and incidence of side effects with antidepressants however, both doctors express that the most important factor when deciding on a treatment for depression is to be fully informed of the risks and benefits. “Medication isn’t all bad,” says Dr Jeffers, “and there are some times when medication can be very helpful. With anything you need to really know what you’re taking and make sure that you get yourself either a GP or a psychiatrist who is very happy to discuss all the pros and cons” Dr Healy agrees, stating that “most of the nervous problems that people get treated for are really very short lived and most of the people who end up on these pills realise how short lived the problems are and how tricky the pills are. I’ve no problem with people being on pills once they know what the risks are and are properly informed and decide to take them… but the key thing is you need to know what the issues are then its up to you to make up your own mind.”