'When it comes to suicide there is nothing that can't be worked out'

The birth of new family members. Being there for loved ones during hard times. These are a few of the moments Clare Elliott would have missed out on if she had succeeded when she tried to commit suicide.

The 48-year-old full-time charity worker, from Glasgow's West End, was in her early 20s and training to be a nurse when she first visited her GP because of sleeping problems.

At the time she had no idea she had a mental illness.

She said: "I thought I wanted to speak to somebody because I was not sleeping very well and was quite over-emotional.

"I didn't think I was depressed. I was restricting how much I ate and I had been self harming. But mental illness was not something that was really out there."

She was given anti-depressants and referred to a psychiatrist.

Soon afterwards she was admitted to an acute psychiatric ward. During that time she tried to control her eating and used self-harm as a coping mechanism.

"It became a cycle of me going into hospital, then they said I was fine and I went back to work," she said. "It was the revolving door. It was like that for the next number of years."

Clare regularly had suicidal thoughts and attempted it several times.

On one occasion when she was in hospital, she was rushed to A&E. The next day doctors discovered she had liver and kidney damage.

Clare, who also campaigns for anti-stigma charity See Me, was eventually diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. But her mental illness does not define her.

She said: "I think it is about accepting you have that condition, but your life is not that condition."

Clare is "grateful" for being alive. She said: "There is so much I would have missed out on.

"Even some of the tiny things are precious, like when you sit down at the bus stop one day and start having a conversation and that person tells you something that is important to them.

"Wee moments like that are what make life important."

Another person who has attempted suicide on a number of occasions is Drumchapel-born James McGinley. But he now says there is nothing that can't be worked out when it comes to suicide.

The 49-year-old author and former journalist has been living with bipolar for 26 years.

He first realised something was wrong when he was about 23 and started getting headaches and "acting a bit strange".

At the time he had a good job with the Post Office, a car and a girlfriend.

However, when he locked himself away in his bedroom at the family home one day before reacting angrily to pleas from his sister, he was admitted to Woodilee Hospital, Lenzie, which looked after patients with mental health problems.

He said: "On the Friday I had everything and the Monday I was sectioned in this hospital.

"It was out in the middle of nowhere. There was no privacy, nothing. There were very acutely ill men and I was terrified."

When he was released from the hospital about two months later, he felt like he "wanted to die".

He managed to travel and work in different vocations, but says he still had a lot of issues he was trying to deal with. James put a lot of it down to being unable to properly grieve for his mother after she died when he was seven.

His life spiralled out of control when his relationship broke up in his early 30s.

James attempted suicide at his flat in Kingsway Court, in Scotstounhill.

He said: "It doesn't make any sense. You feel you have nothing to live for. You think you are the lowest of the low.

"At that point there was nothing to get me out of bed as well."

But James says suicide is a "permanent solution to a temporary problem".

He said: "When it comes to suicide there is nothing that can't be worked through, given time.

"Cry it out. Get a support network in place and talk to people."

Useful numbers

Samaritans: 08457 90 90 90

Breathing Space: 0800 83 85 87