DUBLIN band Friends of Emmet are hosting a Q&A session tonight, March 6, as part of a number of events to raise awareness and funds for Pieta House.
The band’s bass player Keith Geraghty has invited American suicide survivor Kevin Hines to talk about his experience at the Mansion House tonight.
According to Geraghty, the band was influenced so much by Kevin’s story that it motivated them to produce their song ‘Coming Apart’, which features Hines in the video.
“Mark, the singer in the band, was watching a documentary called ‘The Bridge’ by Eric Steel, that showed how the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is the most common place in America for people to take their own lives and that’s where he came across the extraordinary story of Kevin Hines,” Geraghty explained.
“Kevin was 19-years-of age and still in school when he jumped off the bridge after taking a photograph of a German tourist.
“As he was falling, he realised he was falling head first, so he spun his body around in mid-air and shattered every bone in his body as he hit the water.
“A seal actually supported his lifeless body in the water until he was rescued by the coast guard.”
Hines currently tours the United States speaking to school students and members of the armed forces about the topics of suicide and mental health.
Geraghty said the ‘Coming Apart’ video is very “powerful” and that young people from various countries contact the band all the time after watching it.
Pieta House is the suicide awareness and prevention charity that is behind the annual ‘Darkness Into Light’ run across the country on May 7.
Geraghty also recently met Education Minister Richard Bruton at Leinster House to lobby him to make it compulsory for all secondary schools to include the Pieta House logo, number and website details on all homework journals in the country.
He said the minister was very “receptive to the idea” and has asked officials at his department to look into it.
Geraghty said it would cost the Government nothing and that putting the Pieta’s details on homework journals was like putting warnings on cigarette packets.
“The hardest part is to go looking for the number, I know this because I have been there,” added Geraghty, who suffered from depression when he was younger.
Geraghty is behind the ‘A Night for Pieta House’ gig at the Olympia Theatre in April.
“Music is a powerful force in taking on suicide and depression,” he added.
Friends of Emmet will be joining fellow Dubs Aslan to release a single for the gig on April 6. Tickets are €20 and 500 copies of the single will be available at the Olympia on the night, with each costing €5.
REPORT: Andrew Ralph