wanted to be known as “the funny guy”. Nowadays, many people see him as “the depression guy”. He says this at the start of PJ Gallagher: Changing My Mind , a moving if over-ambitious chronicling of his mental health challenges as he prepares to become a father.
Depression drove Gallagher to a dark place. “If I’d had my way, I’d be two years dead,” he says. At his lowest point, he didn’t need to talk – he required “24-hour round the clock care”. In that dark moment he turned to his friend, the writer, before checking into St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin for three months. “There’s something wrong with you,” Preissner says as they catch up for a matey lunch. “I’m autistic. I’m allowed to say these things.
He also reflects on his family history. He and his sister are adopted and had a chaotic upbringing. Their parents turned over part of their home to mental health patients taking their first steps back into the community. “One side of the house six people who were pretty severely mentally ill,” says Gallagher. “Our family dynamic was off the charts.”
PJ Gallagher’s Changing My Mind packs in a great deal in – perhaps too much. Gallagher talks to a men’s support group, goes freshwater swimming with another men’s club, and meets representatives from suicide prevention charity Pieta House.