Nenagh charity CARMHA in danger of closure

The co-founder of well-known Nenagh charity CARMHA has warned that the service may have to close over lack of funding.

Established in 2018, Connection and Recovery in Mental Health and Addiction (CARMHA) offers free-of-charge counselling and peer support to local people battling all forms of addiction and the associated mental health problems.

The CARMHA team of currently four members have never been busier and are working with around 50 service users every week at their Silver St base.

But, according to addiction counsellor and psychotherapist Donie Ryan, the continuation of CARMHA is now threatened by lack of funding. The Nenagh-based service was supported by a Rethink Ireland grant, which ran out last October and has not been replaced by any public funding. CARMHA is now relying on private donations until next spring, when the chance may arise to apply for statutory funding again.

“We’re about to have a couple of lean months,” Mr Ryan warned. He said the situation is ironic in that CARMHA has never been busier and has been delivering its service to those in need in spite of the pandemic restrictions.

“We’re flying it with the client work but the big issue, without a shadow of a doubt, is the funding,” he said. “I am optimistic, but we will be trouble between now and March.”

SPIRALLING DRUG ABUSE

Mr Ryan cited a recent Claire Byrne programme on RTÉ that mentioned a 248% increase in cocaine usage in Tipperary. “I don’t know where she got that figure from but I’m sure it's right,” he commented on the local situation.

“There’s a huge increase in both cocaine and heroin use in Nenagh... Speed is back, which hadn’t been the case in a while. But the biggest increase is in cocaine and heroin, and it is really rampant and really all over the place. We know of loads of people using heroin now, but cocaine has gone through the roof altogether, and there are people not going to parties or anything like that; they’re people just sitting home and using coke.”

The Nenagh drugs counsellor said prescription medication like benzodiazepines and painkillers is also being widely abused on an unprecedentend scale locally. All of this activity has contributed to the surge in demand for CARMHA’s services but - and despite it being a well-known charity - Mr Ryan has found a certain reluctance from some quarters to get behind the cause.

“Almost every family has somebody - an aunt or an uncle or a cousin or a brother [who struggles with addiction] but it’s hard to drum up support - it’s not the most popular of issues,” Mr Ryan observed. “There’s a very negative spin on it. But all we can do is try.”

NEW SOURCES OF SUPPORT

Ever-grateful to all those individuals in the local community who have organised events or taken on endurance challanges to raise funds - funds that are keeping CARMHA going right now - Mr Ryan hoped to find new forms of support and suggested that the corporate sector could possibly help. He mentioned how former Minister for Mental Health Jim Daly visited CARMHA in Nenagh last year, though this did not result in the hoped-for funding from the HSE. Mr Ryan would now like to make a case to the incumbent Minister Mary Butler; he seeks to highlight the great amount of good work achieved by CARMHA, which has worked with at least 250 individuals in the local community in the short time since its inception. Many of these people were hopeless addicts who have gone on to turn their lives around, some of them now qualified professionals working in the area of mental health and addiction themselves. There are plenty of success stories that could be told, though Mr Ryan in mindful of the need for confidentiality where service users are concerned.

In any event, he remains hopeful of keeping the CARMHA door open into 2022; closing it would mean the denial of a service in a time of great need.

“There’s too much going on and there’s too much good stuff happening, and it’s become such an important service - we have people [referred] from Tusla, people from Probation, people from doctors, so if it goes, there’s going to be a gap. It’s too good a service and too important for it to just drop off, I think.”

Donations can be made to CARMHA though a GoFundMe link on their Facebook page. There is also a PayPal link on the website www.carmha.com.