Abuse survivor set to launch new mental health app

A Cavan author and abuse survivor is developing a new mental health and addiction support app, due to launch before the end of this year.

Shercock woman Claire Smith spoke to the Celt about her ambitions for the new support app, which she hopes to roll out across Ireland via a QR code placed on signposts at each county boundary.

The mother of four has also recently penned a new book entitled ‘Girl in the Shadows’, which is currently in the process of securing a publisher.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, Claire hosted a car, coffee and bike morning over the June bank holiday Monday (June 2) at Dún a Rí Forest Park as a way to help raise funds for her soon-to-be free mental health app.

Originally from Louth village, Claire moved away from her home and to Cavan age 15.

“Through my life I would always have suffered with my mental health greatly,” she told the Celt, detailing how at her lowest ebb, she even attempted to take her own life.

Claire feels promoting positive mental health and putting services in place to support others is “crucial”, but expresses dismay and disappointment at size of waiting lists and busy hospitals.

Now 38, she revealed how she “never wanted” to go to hospital but knew she needed support.

“For me doing this app, it’s a complete self-help app,” she explains.

“We have real life stories for people who have suffered from mental health and are still suffering. It’s going to have a lot of recovery tools, it will have sections in it for meditation, playlists for music, activities for events that’s going on,” she adds.

Upon completion, each app user will have their own personal profile where they can journal and keep their emergency contacts. The app is being developed in conjunction with a psychologist. It will be accessible 24 hours a day with free download. It has been split into different sections for different moods.

“The way I want to categorise it is that we never get back down to ‘on our knees’, this self help app aims to keep you above the middle section,” explained Claire.

The ‘Hold On’ app is currently ready for production, and is just awaiting some additional inserts such as videos. Claire has set up a Go Fund Me page, which is currently at €2.5k with a goal of €15k.

“I feel with the app it makes it personal. You can go on TikTok and Facebook and find different videos but I just think there’s too much out there. With mental health you can be very, very overloaded very quickly. I feel that, if all of this is one app and all you have to do is click into one section, boom, it’s going to take you out of what you’re sitting with.”

Speaking on her own journey with mental health, Claire said her experience has “absolutely” been the driving force behind the creation of this app. She described how she experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her father from a young age and also her unhealthy relationship with alcohol in her early teenage years. She recalled going to bed with a coke bottle “filled with anything in the press that was alcohol”.

“I was sexually abused by my father and many others up until the age of fifteen. For me, isolation and loneliness were always a massive thing. Even if you were in a crowded room, you were always still the loneliest person and nobody understood you.”

Claire’s father, Seamus Byrne, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2012 for sexually abusing his daughter on a number of occasions between 1997 and 2001.

“For me with this app I feel so passionate about it because it’s giving understanding to the misunderstood. It’s giving connection where were sitting in isolation and we feel like nobody knows what we’re going through.”

She described the app as “vital” and a “lifeline”.

“You’re giving light to the darkness that’s living within someone - that there is hope out there and people have lived this journey.”

Claire told the Celt she is now doing “very good” but her mood was “up and down” while writing her book and developing the app.

She recalled sitting at the table, trying to work out the timeline of her life.

“I never knew when it started, I just presumed every father done this to their daughter, it was very difficult.

“It just brings me right back but I needed to feel it to heal it. It had given me liberation; it has given me a new lease of life.”

Her father passed away in 2020.”I was grieving for even the parts of me that was hurt by him, but then I wouldn’t be the woman I am today only for that.”

The book also tells the story of her experience in a toxic relationship, while she also writes letters to “the one who is hurting others and to the one that is hurt”.

To donate to the app development, click here.