'I thought that with depression you cry all day and don't want to get out of bed'

Gabrielle Cooney McGuire will never forget the day and hour when she knew, for sure, she had a problem; a big problem.

She had just finished her day's work in a hospital in Reading, just outside London, and set out on the journey home to her husband and baby son.
“I was a theatre nurse there at the time and I came out of work one Saturday afternoon and the traffic in Reading was backed up,” she recalls as she sits down with the Meath Chronicle to talk about a series of extraordinary, harrowing events in her life that brought her to the edge.
“I had a good maybe 600 or 800 yards to go before the next car in front of me and and like, that, a thought came into my head. 'If I speed up and go into the back of the car in front of me and kill myself, then my husband and my child will be much better off because the won't have to deal with me but as quick as that another thought came to me: 'Jesus, woman there's something wrong with you, you need to get yourself sorted.'
“I took myself off to a friend, she had baby number four and I thought I would have a chat with her to see if this is normal. She had four kids, maybe she could advise. She essentially frog-marched me down to my GP and thus began my journey with depression. That was in 2002.”
It proved to be a long, painful journey but Gabrielle was to eventually find a refuge from the storm in the kindness of family, friends and neighbours; more specifically in local drama groups, where her exuberance, her love of fun and a laugh could find expression.
The source of her depression lay in a series of harrowing events that occurred between the ages of four and 12 when, she says, she was sexually abused by three different people in three different “episodes.”
Gabrielle had attended school in Navan and went on to become a qualifed nurse, moving to England to to add to her bank of experience. It was there she met Mark McGuire from Portsmouth who had strong family connections with Mayo. They were married and had a baby son when Gabrielle was 26 - and a daughter 17 months later. The family settled in Reading and went about the task of building a new life.
It should have been a happy time for the couple but instead it turned out to be a turbulent, troubled, unstable spell when the emotions and feelings Gabrielle had buried for years started to bubble up into the surface, sparked by a bout of post-natal depression.
Now, she says, she wants to speak out about the journey she has made, primarily to help others. She tried to grapple with her issues herself for years but that didn't work. In her view she feels it's better to speak out - just like Prince Harry did recently - about mental health issues and how to deal with them.
“I feel that it's especially important for young people to express themselves, especially in this era of social media.”
While Gabrielle - who these days works as a flight nurse, travelling around the world - would have liked to have had her children born in Ireland, she is, in hindsight, glad that they came into the world in England. The health support services there she found of a high quality. The problem, she came to realise, was not with others but rather herself - and her reluctance to face up to issues that stirred up a tsunami of emotions.
“The person who visited me from the health service sussed from the day she met me things weren't quite as they should be. She kept in very close contact with me and suggested I had a little bit of post-natal depression but I was having none of it (puts on a high-pitched voice) no, no, no, I most certainly wasn't depressed.
“I was getting dressed every day, my dishes were clean, I was being a superhuman mum because that's what I thought depression was. I thought that with depression you cry all day and don't want to get out of bed.”
She said she kept “the act” up even after the thought that came into her mind on a Reading street. She and her family moved to Ireland in 2003 and settled into a house back in Navan. Pleased to be back home, among her old friends and family, Gabrielle's “nightmare” continued. She contined to struggle with depression all the time maintaining her career as a nurse.
Looking back now she feels she went through “hell” especially during a seven-year spell when her life was a constant struggle when she felt, as the Greek philosopher Seneca described it: “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“The years from 2001 to 2008 were horrific, seven long bloody years when I put my poor husband and my children through torture and myself, through absolute torture. What happened was that in 2008 my husband, bless him, and myself had a long conversation. He said your're a nurse, if someone had an issue with their heart you'd send them to see a specialist, a cardiologist. If they had something wrong with their bones you'd send them to a orthopaedist, you wouldn't leave them with a GP. You're GP is great but she's not a specialist.
“So I said you're absolutley right and why did it take me so long to see that and I asked her to refer me to a psychologist and I remember waiting to go in and thinking to myself you know that unless I give this fellow the full bill of the races I'm only codding myself and I'm never going to get any better.
The “full bill of the races” as she puts it was her experiences of when she was sexually abused. “It was a lightburb moment, I realised it have to tell it warts and all, whatever, just tell it and I did.”
Stepping across that line when she started to tell people about those suppressed memories was, she says, a huge deal. She knew it was opening a box that couldn't be closed again.
She took a further, giant step outside the comfort zone when she went to court in 2011 in the pursuit of justice for what she describes as the “most invasive” of the sexual abuse episodes. That too proved to be a harrowing experience. She recalls how she took her place in court one day. “As I turned I could see from the corner of my eye my abuser sitting, literally behind me. I had a panic attack. I haven't had since, thank God, but I did have panic attacks during that period of time.”
The kindness of people helped her on the road to recovery. A few years ago she was asked to take part in a fund-raising - Strictly Come Dancing event - for the Walterstown Church. She loved it. It was where her out-going, fun-loving nature could find expression. Since then she has gone on to take part in other productions such as Mrs Brown's Boys, a mock wedding and more recently a fund-raising production of the 'Mr & Mrs Show.' Laughter, she has known for some time now, is really the best medicine.
“For six or eight weeks before we put on the show we meet up every Sunday night and literally fall around the place with the laughter for two hours. We get feck all work done but we have the best laughs.”
It has been a long, torturous journey for Gabrielle Cooney McGuire but she now in a happier place. She has learned to move on.

Gabrielle Cooney McGuire on....

..............The benefits taking to the stage

“We did two dances, waltz and the jive (in the Strictly Come Dancing fundraiser) and it was the best thing I ever did, the best thing because up until that my self confidence took a serious battering, my self esteem was at an all time low and even though I was going into work and keeping the show on the road. Outwardly everything was perfect, inwardly I was dying, absolutely dying.
“It was exhausting keeping the act up (pretending to be happy when inside she was “dying”) but anyway I started to do Strictly Come Dancing. It was really and truly the best thing I ever did.”

..........................How others helped her deal with her depression

“My GP was fantastic and continues to be but my pharmacist was amazing, absolutely amazing. I think sometimes people don't speak to their pharmacist enough. She knew what I was going through because I suppose she was dispensing the medications to me and she would say to me: 'How are you?' and I went through the old 'Sure, I'm grand, I'm grand, there's not a bother on me, what would be wrong with me.
“Once or twice she caught me on the hop and when you're feeling ropey and somebody is nice to you ah Jasus, it's situations like that when you're bladder sits very close to your eye and the next thing is you're in floods of tears.”