Self-harm and self-injury are a reality for many young people. It is still one of the top 10 reasons why children contact Childline. Last year alone, Childline counsellors talked to 315 children in Northern Ireland about self-harm.
Self-harm can take lots of physical forms including cutting, burning, bruising, scratching, hair-pulling, poisoning and overdosing. The exact reasons why children and young people decide to hurt themselves aren’t always easy to work out. In fact, they might not even know themselves exactly why they are doing it. Far from a cry for attention, it can often be the only way a young person knows how to deal with the overwhelming emotions they are feeling and once it starts it can become a compulsion. Therefore, it is important that no matter what the reason, it is taken seriously. There are links between depression and self-harm and quite often a child or young person who is self-harming is being bullied, under too much pressure to do well at school, being emotionally abused, grieving, or having relationship problems with friends or family. Often, the physical pain of self-harm might feel easier to deal with than the emotional pain that’s behind it. It can also make a young person feel they’re in control of at least one part of their lives.
Self-Injury Awareness Day was last Thursday and it highlighted the importance of being aware of self-harm and how to help a young person going through it.
We need to see greater emphasis given to the regulation of social media and tackling of self-harm promotion sites. It is too easy for young people to find this harmful information online and it can have a potentially devastating impact.
For adults, is important that if you know a young person who is at risk of self-harming that no matter how you feel, that you let them know you are there to support and help them in whatever way they need. That can be talking to them about their self-harm and why they might be doing it, or helping them to better avoid their ‘triggers’. Give them trust and space, and build their confidence by focussing on things they do well.
Childline is a 24/7 support for children and they can call 0800 1111 or chat online with a counsellor at www.childline.org.uk anytime.
MAIREAD MONDS
Childline Manager for Northern Ireland
Society has responsibility to ensure no-one goes hungry
I was intrigued to see recent media reports on how a new law in France that requires supermarkets to give leftover food to charities is working out.
Supermarkets can be fined the equivalent of £3,000 if they illegally throw away edible food.
Meanwhile, volunteers from a network of food banks go to more than 9,000 supermarkets across France to collect food such as yoghurt, pizza, fresh fruits, vegetables and cheese, before dropping the goods off in churches and other community hubs to be distributed by food banks.
Not only does this legislative change in France reduce food waste, but it helps those in need.
France now leads on this issue, placing top in the Food Sustainability Index 2017 in Europe overall and polling top in terms of its score for food loss
and waste.
This position is a reflection of the policy responses implemented in France including the ban on supermarket waste and making it mandatory for larger supermarkets to donate food to charitable organisations.
Food waste is a global issue and according to UN FAO, recovering 25 per cent of the wasted food could feed 870m people which could greatly help on the quest to end hunger.
According to The Guardian, in 2015 the UK threw away £13bn worth of food. Of this, 4.4m tonnes of household food waste could have been eaten, which only highlights the scale of the issue and why legislation and action on this is crucial from the supermarkets as having a key role in the chain.
We have a responsibility in society to ensure that no-one goes hungry. This is one part of a greater set of policies and changes that are needed for a circular economy and reducing waste as well as duty of care to others.
Cllr RACHEL WOODS
Green Party, Bangor West
Victims’ families must unite
The families of the victims of the Troubles in NI must unite to demand that truth and justice is properly carried out. The ‘Time for Truth’ rally in Belfast was led by Sinn Féin, which has divided the movement, while there is a common interest for all those killed in the Troubles for public inquiries.
The key obstacle to ascertaining the truth is the role MI5/6 have played in orchestrating violence during the Troubles. For the truth to emerge it would expose MI5/6, that instead of working towards ending violence, they worked towards perpetually continuing it.
The Northern Ireland conflict is no different from the 9/11 wars in the Middle East.
The aim of the CIA and British intelligence was to invade Middle Eastern countries, recruit rebel groups and instead of bringing about peace, continue the war in the interest of the hundreds of armaments companies. Northern Ireland, one of the biggest conflict zones, was treated no differently.
The Irish people were cannon fodder, used by MI5/6 for the interests of the weapons establishment. Exposing the secret service role would directly target the central reason the truth is hidden from the victims families.
HARRY HUTCHINSON
Labour NI
Shining light on truth and justice
The stance taken by Francie Brolly and Lee Devine (February 27) and two TDs shines a light of truth and justice into the deep morass, which has become of Sinn Féin’s much vaunted platform for equality and a rights based society. Mr Brolly and Mr Devine’s stand against a coordinated assault upon the unborn – equally defended by the ideals of the Easter Proclamation, shows that without equality for them, then everything else falls.
But in the protracted attack on the Eighth Amendment and its hopeful sacrifice upon the altar of expediency, Sinn Féin shows its deafness and blindness to such heroic foresight. While appealing to the last vestiges of Catholic conscience Mr Brolly makes an appeal to see sense; but to Mrs O’Neill’s apparatchiks, it’s nothing but recourse to deluded priest craft.
At the conclusion of her trial, in February 1943, Sophie Scholl stated to those who condemned her stance for God, conscience and morality, that where she was now, they would one day stand. Before the terrible tribunal of Divine justice, those indifferent to the humanity of the unborn will find that allegiances to party policies, will matter very little.
JDP McALLION
Clonoe, Co Tyrone
Silent voices of Irish babies
Sinn Féin’s newly ‘elected’ leader, Mary Lou McDonald, ended her acceptance speech at the special ard fheis last month with the best known slogan in the Irish language – Tiocfaidh ár lá. Sadly, she and the current Sinn Féin leadership, demanding total obedience from their elected members, Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter and other, are campaigning for an end to the constitutional protection of our unborn. If they succeed, the terrible violence and evil of abortion will ensure that the silent voices of thousands of Irish babies yet to be born will whisper ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá’ in vain.
FRANCIE BROLLY
Dungiven, Co Derry
