I had the pleasure of being part of the first Dublin North Trialogue Meeting in a beautiful community space, an old renovated church at Respond Housing, Grace Park road. The monthly Trialogue meeting was established as part of the Dublin North, North East Recovery College and this first meeting indicated a keen community interest in discussing mental health issues in North Dublin.Soon after the purpose and practice of Trialogue was introduced, a clear topic soon emerged that people wanted to talk about.

At first the topic centred around the lack of appropriate mental health services available to children and young people in North Dublin. People relayed their negative experiences of trying to get help for loved ones. It soon emerged that there were more services than at first thought, particularly if people searched outside of statutory mental health services. As others shared information about what services could be accessed it became clear that there was a lack of knowledge and information about accessible services in addition to the limited availability of services.

The Trialogue Meeting served as an information resource because of the diverse experiences of those present. Indeed the swapping of information and numbers during coffee after the Trialogue finished ran on so long, people had to be shooed out so the building could close…. Plenty of food for thought and hopefully discussion at our next Trialogue meeting on 5th December at 18:30 in the same place.