An international Christian charity, Christ in Youth, will be hosting worldwide premieres of its award-winning new film 'Unseen' which examines the effects of suicide among young people in Ireland.
The film comes after it emerged last year that Ireland has the fourth highest teen suicide rate in the EU/OECD region, according to research from Unicef showing that Ireland's suicide rate amongst adolescents aged 15 to 19 was higher than the international average, with 10.3 per 100,000 population ranking well above the national country average of 6.1 per 100,000.
Now CIY, which has bases in Dublin, Belfast and around the world will be hosting the first ever international viewings of Unseen which was filmed in Ireland in March 2017, won the Best Short Film in Ireland at the Richard Harris Film festival in October 2017 and was also a nominated finalist in the 2017 Galway film festival. The highly moving film features the Irish actors Bob Carley and Desmond Eastwood, and was developed by a mostly Irish-based crew.
Carley plays the part of Alexander, who finds his grandson, Owen (played by Eastwood) preparing to take his own life. As the day unfolds, Owen learns new information about his grandfather's past and unlocks the secret to facing his own future.
CIY knows what it is talking about. For 50 years, Christ In Youth has been providing events, missions experiences and resources for thousands of young people in partnership with churches.
Jasper Rutherford, CIY's European Director, says the church must do more to help. 'The church should be the very place where young people and young adults can feel safe to talk about their mental health. Unfortunately, that is not always the case,' he says. 'This film, if used in the right way, is an incredible tool for youth workers, church leaders, teachers and parents to have these sensitive, yet much needed, conversations with today's young people.'
Speaking to Christian Today, Rutherford continues: 'What I would love is for the church to be the very place where young people can feel safe to have these conversations and the church should not shy away from these conversations. That really is the challenge – that we can be part of the solution and help some of the people in need.'
Rutherford, who has been a youth worker for nearly 20 years, absorbed the statistics on Ireland's suicide rate and wanted to make a difference.
'I knew Belfast had the leading suicide rate in the UK – but I didn't realise the Republic of Ireland had such a high rate and it's under-reported,' he says.
Ireland (unlike the UK) has a minister for mental health who Rutherford met with 'and she said Church was part of the problem'.
Suicide, after all, is seen as a sin in Catholic Church, and it was a criminal offence until the '80s, with families having to pretend that a relative had been killed in some other way, hence the title of the film, Unseen.
'Our view is youth workers and people in church are the very people to talk to and church should be a safe place to talk about mental health. The church has maybe tapped out of that a little bit. We wanted to bring the conversation back into the church and the classroom,' Rutherford tells Christian Today.
Asked what lies behind Ireland's youth suicide problem, Rutherford concedes that it is a highly complex area.
'If young people that are struggling with mental health feel they can't talk about it, that builds up – all the stats show if you can catch people early then suicide rates are drastically reduced,' he says. 'One of the priests we met, in 2016, he had 13 suicides in a little village with only 26,000 people.
'Obviously there is some evidence of how bullying online and social media – people don't have any respite when at home, not like when we used to go home and they could switch off. This adds stress and concern to young people. But it's a complex issue. There are lots of societal needs and lots of things going on in people's lives. Who can they talk to? They may be connected with lots of people online – but are they really connected relationally?'
And that is the great point of Unseen. 'This is why a film works so well – because it opens up conversations. After the film you can ask people who they might talk to if they had any [suicidal] thoughts. If you can tell a story it gets them to think about their mental health.'
Unseen will premiere for the first time internationally at 7:30pm on March 5 in Dublin, with follow-up screenings on March 7 in Limerick and March 8 in Belfast. It is also going to be provided as a free resource for schools across the country to help equip them and also create openness and a safe place to talk about the issue with young people.To find out more – including behind-the-scenes features and resources to further the discussion around mental health – and to get a free ticket to the screening and view the trailer, visit unseenfilm.org
