Padraig Jack

Singer-songwriter

"About five or six years ago, I was going through a period of anxiety, and then depression. Up until then I’d never really known depression – I’m sure I had felt depressed at times, but I didn’t recognise it.

I’d had a car accident a year before. I was okay, but I’d lost a cousin in a car accident a few years previous to that, so it affected me. A few friends of mine had emigrated – which unfortunately seems to be a thing that’s starting to happen again – including two of my best friends and my sister, so I felt a bit alone. And also in terms of career – I was in college, and I didn’t know where all of that was going. So there were a few different things that had built up.

After my first panic attack, I went to a counsellor straight away and talked to friends and family, and over a period of about a year, I kind of talked my way out of it. I saw it as something that had happened to come upon me – therefore I might be able to shed it again. But there were no guarantees.

The metaphor “The red of hell, draped in black” from my latest single, ‘It’s Alright Now (Black Drapes)’ was how I saw the difference between depression and anxiety – anxiety being the red of hell, but covered by a black drape of darkness. I wrote the song when I was in the middle of it, as a way of helping myself.

I had no intention of recording it. Now, mental health issues are so common that people who are going through, or have gone through, something come up to me and mention that song."

Read the full mental health special in the new issue of Hot Press, out now.