Connell’s first university counselling session

Connell’s first university counselling session is the point at which his deteriorating mental health becomes both speakable and formally recognizable. After Rob Hegarty’s suicide, Connell’s anxiety intensifies into panic attacks and his sense of isolation deepens; during the meeting with Yvonne, he connects that decline to guilt over Rob, estrangement from his old life, and his difficulty finding people with whom he feels at ease. The session does not resolve those losses, but turns them into concerns that can be acknowledged and addressed.

Background and decision to seek help

Connell attends the university counselling service after Niall recommends it on practical grounds: it is free. He has been living in scholarship accommodation and seeing little of other people. His distress is already affecting ordinary activity: the previous night, too tired to get from his en suite to his bed, he lay on his room’s floor for an hour and a half. The episode captures the inertia of his depression without making it a dramatic revelation; even the short distance between two visible places feels impossible to cross.

The waiting-room questionnaire gives that private condition a form. One item asks about pessimism, and Connell recognizes himself in the most hopeless statement, but circles a less severe answer because he does not want to alarm the person who will receive the form. He similarly hesitates to disclose the extent of his suicidal thoughts to a stranger. His answers therefore record both his suffering and his effort to contain what he reveals. When he hands over the completed pages, their intensely personal contents feel exposed, although the receptionist receives them matter-of-factly and asks him to wait for the counsellor.

Rob’s death and Connell’s worsening distress

Yvonne asks when Connell began feeling unwell. He places the change in January, after Rob’s death. A few days into the new year, at two in the morning, Connell received a group message asking whether anyone had seen Rob. He was returning from a night out with Helen, and, when Helen asked about the message, he brushed it off. Rob’s body was recovered from the River Corrib the next day. The contrast between the message’s immediate uncertainty and the confirmed death that followed gives the loss a sudden, irreversible shape.

Connell later learns that Rob had been drinking heavily and seemed out of sorts, but Connell had not known: he had spent little time at home and had not been keeping up with people. Checking his old messages, he finds Rob’s last message to him, sent in early 2012, and realizes that he never replied. Nor can he recall with certainty when he last saw Rob. When he tries to summon Rob’s face, the image initially seems recognizable but will not hold its features. The old message and failing memory become concrete points around which his guilt gathers: he feels that he was absent and missed an opportunity to help, though he could not have known what was happening.

Since the death, Connell’s previously chronic, low-level anxiety has grown severe. Minor social interactions can make his hands tingle; he has also experienced major panic attacks involving hyperventilation, chest pain, and pins and needles, accompanied by a temporary sense that his surroundings have become unreal. The episodes pass, but their intensity frightens him. In the counselling room he tells Yvonne that a friend from school died by suicide and that he feels guilty for not having been in touch. She tells him that Rob’s death was not his responsibility and that it is common for people bereaved by suicide to wonder whether they could have done something. Connell remains focused on the unanswered message and on the possibility that he failed to help.

Assessment and response

The inventory makes the severity of Connell’s distress measurable. Yvonne explains that the Beck Depression Inventory assigns a score from zero to three for each item. She contrasts the low scores expected from someone without depression and the higher range associated with a mild depressive episode with Connell’s score of forty-three, which she identifies as indicating very serious depression. Asked whether that description fits his experience, he quietly agrees. The number gives institutional weight to what he has been reluctant to disclose, including his negative feelings about himself and suicidal thoughts.

Yvonne recommends that Connell speak with a doctor at the college health service about the possibility of medication, while clarifying that she cannot prescribe it herself. She also asks about his family and whether he has a partner. Connell says he has no girlfriend or boyfriend. When she asks whether he has anyone nearby with whom he can talk, he names Niall, who directed him to the service, and Marianne, who is away on an Erasmus exchange. The answers show that support exists, but is limited by distance and by how difficult Connell finds it to feel close to people.

Isolation, belonging, and the losses behind it

Connell describes Marianne as someone who knew Rob and with whom he speaks often by Skype. He says she has been supportive, is highly intelligent, and sees the world in a way similar to his. Their conversations offer connection across distance, although they have not discussed what happened in Italy. He also says that he has few people with whom he genuinely clicks. This difficulty is familiar from school, where he sometimes felt isolated even while other people liked him; at Trinity, he feels less liked and less at home.

That sense of displacement is sharpened by his account of class and social life at Trinity. Connell had imagined that moving from Carricklea would let him find a different life and perhaps more like-minded people. Instead, he says, students around him compare how much money their parents make, and he finds the people there worse than those he knew at school. He has little contact with Niall and lives apart from the social world he once shared with Rob and other school friends. The move meant as a chance to belong elsewhere has become, in his telling, a separation from both places: he hates being at Trinity and believes the friendships in Carricklea are gone. Rob’s death makes the old life not merely distant but unrecoverable.

When Connell reaches this thought, he begins to cry. Yvonne moves a box of tissues toward him; he takes one, wipes his face, and apologizes. His response is notable for how uncertain he remains that he has been understood, even as he has managed to say more than he intended. The scene holds together the need to speak and his doubt about whether speaking will create real connection.

Practical help and continuing grief

Yvonne explains that counselling can work on feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, even when it cannot change the circumstances themselves. She gives Connell worksheets with illustrated arrows and printed information about managing anxiety. He accepts them while pretending he intends to complete and read them later, a small sign of his ambivalence about the prescribed routine rather than a rejection of the meeting as a whole. She also prints a note for him to take to the college health service, directing him toward further assessment, and he says he will return for another session in two weeks.

The session’s significance lies less in a sudden recovery than in its movement from concealed symptoms toward witnessed, named distress. Connell has minimized answers on the questionnaire, struggled to describe his thoughts to a stranger, and repeatedly measured his present against an irretrievable past. Yvonne’s assessment identifies the seriousness of his depression and establishes concrete next steps, while the conversation makes clear that Rob’s death, Connell’s guilt, and his social alienation remain intertwined. Seeking help begins a response to that condition; it does not erase the loss or restore the friendships he feels he has lost.