‘The system is broken—you’re not’: Bressie delivers raw mental health talk in Leitrim

On May 3, Niall “Bressie” Breslin stood in front of a packed room at The Landmark Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon and said what many needed to hear: “You’re not broken. The system is.”

His live show Where Is My Mind?, hosted by Leitrim’s Health is Wealth, blended raw personal storytelling with a powerful call for change.

“At my worst, I was taking 15 sleeping pills a day,” Bressie said. “Not to get high—just to feel nothing. I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to exist.”

He spoke about panic attacks that left him curled in hallways, unable to breathe. About a mental health system that only opened its doors when he hit rock bottom.

“It’s not resilience if the only way to get help is to be completely destroyed first.”

The evening opened quietly, powerfully. Bressie sat at the piano and played softly beneath the recorded words of writer Michael Harding—reflections on loss, healing, and the quiet dignity of pain. It set the tone: raw, reflective, and deeply human.

He didn’t offer platitudes. He questioned everything—especially the culture around healing.

“We’ve turned mental health into a checklist. A podcast, a smoothie, a few deep breaths. But real healing? It’s brutal. It’s messy. And it takes time.”

Bressie described a moment in a 24-hour crisis centre when a nurse hugged him without saying a word.

“That hug saved me. Not medication. Not a workbook. A human moment.”

Quoting psychologist Dr Tony Bates, he added: “Psychosis is when someone’s reality is so painful, they create another one. If you can’t have empathy for that, you’ve lost your soul.”

The night also featured Eurovision’s Charlie McGettigan and psychiatrist Dr Catherine Dolan. But the room kept coming back to Bressie’s central message—mental health isn’t about perfection. It’s about honesty.

“I thought success would fix me. It didn’t. Connection did.”

He ended the night with this: “This world will try to tell you who you are. Don’t let it. You already know.”

No applause line. Just truth.

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