Niall Breslin On His Bord Gáis Energy Book Award Win

Bressie has ticked his fair share of boxes over the years; rugby pro, rock star, TV personality, and an all-round good guy. Now, he's added 'award winning writer' to a CV that makes us bloody well embarrassed.

Me and My Mate Jeffrey won the Books Are My Bag Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award at the 2015 Bord Gáis Awards last week, which saw Bressie take his place alongside Anne Enright, Sara Baume and Jim McGuinness on the winners rostrum.

In Me And My Mate Jeffrey, Bressie attempts to understand the debilitating effects that depression has on everyday life and how he tackled it head on. Rather than letting depression get the better of him, Bressie has broken through the tabooed nature that comes with speaking about mental health and dealt with it head on.

“It was actually, ultimately being able to talk about it openly that was probably the biggest step towards recovery,” he tells Hot Press, “because it was never the illness that was killing me it was hiding the illness all the time. That’s what took it out of me. It was that guilt. It just zaps you, constantly making excuses for yourself, and constantly repressing who you really are, it’s really not good for you.”

In Me And My Mate Jeffrey, Bressie attempts to humanise his depression, to give it a name and control it, taking away some of the fear that comes with depression, of it being something akin to an unknown assailant. Where some would naturally feel a hesitancy in exposing themselves to the public, for Bressie it was a necessity to do so.

“If you’re writing about your life experiences, it can be very literary, in a revealing way,” he reflects. “I think with songwriting it can be subtle and use metaphors and all sorts but when you’re writing a book about mental health, you can’t throw out Oprah Winfrey quotes and tell everybody it’s grand and that once you see the light it’s all good. It’s not grand and it’s horrible and it’s a fuckin’ tough slog. I think it’s important to highlight that.”

“I wouldn’t have wrote the book if I wasn’t in a very strong place mentally,” he continues. “I can’t tell you how hard I’ve worked in my head and I’ve basically been going to the gym for my brain for five years now. I’ve invested in everything I’ve known thats out there to strengthen my mind… I’ve got incredibly strong mentally. There are these things that used to haunt me through my life and I’ve taken control back. There always there but they’ll never take control back. I have control now and that’s all I ever wanted.”

For Bressie the conversation on mental health has been improving, no doubt spurred on by his attempt at personalising mental health and giving it a public face and taking it away from the stigmatisation it has been historically associated with Ireland. Yet, the journey of course, is nowhere near finished with yet.

“We have to invest much more in education,” states Bressie. “But I think the other thing that annoys me a bit is that I’m a mental health activist and campaigner and asking people to go out and get help, to seek help but so often the help isn’t there. We have amazing groups and we have charity groups doing all they can but if a child who is fifteen years of age with no healthcare insurance and wants help they should be getting it today. Not in six weeks time. An awful lot of the population are unwell because of the toughness of the last six or seven years and the toll that has taken on people. They have an absolute one hundred percent responsibility to make access available to primary mental care services to anyone in this country who wants them at any stage.”