Bressie’s Ironmind makes its RTÉ2 bow on Sunday November 22 at 9.30pm.
“Achieving physical goals has been enormously beneficial to my own mental wellness, so I wanted to share that with them,” Niall says explaining the concept. “Their issues range from quite severe anxiety disorders to clinical depression. One of them had suffered a brain injury which they were finding it quite difficult to come back from. There’s a post-natal depression theme too. It’s a very difficult and complex thing for women and their loved ones to deal with and not just ‘the baby blues’.
“We did the recruiting through Aware and had two clinical psychologists overseeing the whole thing. We expected maybe 30 people to come forward but ended up with 340, which shows you that they want help.
“It’s the most difficult thing I’ve had to get commissioned because the vision, although very clear in my mind, is hard to convey to sponsors,” Bressie concludes. “There was a danger of it not happening when RTÉ turned around and said, ‘You know what? Don’t worry about a sponsor. We’ll fund this ourselves.’ There’s a willingness to put things on that two or three years ago would have been deemed too heavy and depressing for primetime, which is really healthy.”