As a child, Kieran McKeon was hungry for life. An energetic sports lover with a kind heart, he was beloved by those around him – his schoolfriends, team-mates and, of course, his parents.
“He was fantastic,” says John McKeon, Kieran’s father. “He was really caring for his brothers and his nephews and nieces. He had a super energy.” He loved rugby, loved school, “had a great many pals” and was “super bright”, his dad recalls.
John reflects on the life he and his wife Vicky had with Kieran and his brothers, Michael and Rory. They lived in the Netherlands for a few years while the boys were small, before returning to Ireland.
“We had as ideal a sort of family life as you could imagine,” says John. “Just a wonderful, wonderful life.”
But when Kieran was turning 13 and entering secondary school, he caught a virus which led to a debilitating case of chronic fatigue, leaving him unable to do the things he enjoyed so much – see his friends, play sport, attend school consistently – or simply have the energy to enjoy life with his brothers and family.
“He almost had too many gifts in life. He had everything,” says John. “He was caring, he was kind, he was intelligent and he was incredibly gifted as a sports kid. And I think that was part of his problem, because the chronic fatigue stole all of this from him ... the contrast was so dark for him, that he’d lost so much.”
Kieran’s identity, still forming yet so full of life and energy, was stolen from him. After years of chronic fatigue and a life that came to seem unrecognisable, he developed severe depression.
“From when he was 15 to 18, Kieran had all the help that the system in Ireland could give, in terms of [St] John of Gods, psychiatric support, and he would have spent upwards of a year in psychiatric hospital, on and off,” says John. “But unfortunately, he had a number of suicide attempts. He eventually succeeded in taking his life just after his 18th birthday in March of 2013.”
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The impact on the family was unspeakable. With Michael and Rory just 16 and 14 at the time, John and Vicky saw it as their duty to keep going as best they could and raise their boys. When Rory turned 18, John, a businessman, had what he calls a crisis of meaning, and decided he needed to do something different.
“I quit my job and I went and did a psychology conversion course in Trinity, and that was really probably as much [about] processing my own grief as learning the psychology,” he says.
In 2019 John and Vicky took time to walk the entire Camino de Santiago, more than 900km. On that journey John realised what he wanted his life’s work and Kieran’s legacy to be. He thought back to a trip he had taken to Gould Farm, a residential, therapeutic farm in Massachusetts, towards the end of Kieran’s illness.
Founded in 1913, Gould Farm is a place where adults with mental health challenges live, contributing to the farm, participating in therapy and working with a clinical team on a personalised plan to build up their life skills, resilience and senses of purpose, community and empowerment.
Research has shown that residents, who live at the farm for up to 10 months, report significant gains, both in symptom reductions and in functioning from pre- to post-treatment. They also report significant quality-of-life improvements and low rates of rehospitalisation or readmission.
There’s relationship in community. On the farm you’ve got a shared goal, you are doing something that has a purpose and everyone has a role. It’s meaningful and there are consequences of it not happening
— John McKeon
John outlines the differences between Kieran’s experiences as someone who was hospitalised and the possibilities offered by therapeutic farms such as Gould Farm.
“In a psychiatric hospital you meet your psychiatrist once a week, if you’re lucky,” he says. “There’s a lot of waiting around, a lot of time sitting around doing nothing, maybe doing a jigsaw, maybe watching telly. And this isn’t the fault of people – the people in John of Gods were wonderful to Kieran and absolutely did their best – it’s just the structure of institutional life. But when I went to Gould farm, it’s such a contrast. It’s making the social aspect of the biopsychosocial model come to life.
“People get up in the morning and they have a purpose. The purpose might just be to participate in the horticultural team that morning or participate in the bakery team in the afternoon and, in between then, they might have a meeting with a psychologist for an hour – but you’re bringing structure to their whole life. You’re bringing agency to their life.
“They get up in the morning themselves. They come to breakfast where they’re choosing their food, where they may have made some of that food the day before in the bakery. So the contrast is phenomenal in terms of the ingredients for healing, which I would say are community life, meaningful participation, nature, professional therapy and time.”
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The focus on relationships, empowerment and creating a sense of purpose and meaning are integral to the therapeutic farm model. In a very real sense, healing is built into every part of the day.
“There’s relationship in community,” says John. “On the farm, you’ve got a shared goal, you are doing something that has a purpose and everyone has a role. It’s not tokenistic, it’s meaningful and there are consequences of it not happening. If you don’t make the yoghurt in the bakery for the breakfast the next day, people don’t have it. Or if you’ve got a little farm shop, like they have in Gould Farm, if you’re producing baked goods or cookies that are being sold in the shop, or vegetables that are being harvested, that all has purpose. When there are consequences and results, you see the impact of your work and your contribution, which gives it meaning.”
The connection of therapeutic farms to the broader community, which can come from volunteers working on the farm or guests selling the farm’s produce, also helps destigmatise mental health and allows guests to feel bonded to the wider community, instead of hidden away from it.
“Gould Farm really left a strong mark on me,” says John, “and I thought that it would be wonderful to have something like this in Ireland. And when I was doing the Camino, I said to Vicky, you know, I’d love to give three years of my life to see if we can get this up and running. And so we started.”
The idea for Kyrie Farm was born – and over the past five years of planning, researching and fundraising, the charity’s project has gone from strength to strength. With John and Vicky as its founders, it also has a board of directors, with clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, peer support workers and participants with lived experience of mental healthcare, who all believe this type of mental health service is necessary.
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The idea behind Kyrie Farm is, in a sense, returning to the basics of mental healthcare that are constantly spoken of but far more rarely embodied: creating connections to nature and strong social support systems. John has had architects, landscapers and horticulturists develop detailed plans for the Co Kildare site; the aim is to build eight houses in little clusters across the property, with a total capacity of 40 residents.
The farm itself would provide work and responsibilities for each resident, and there would also be a substantial community building where meals, yoga and therapy would take place, and an admin building for staff.
The design of Kyrie Farm focuses on embracing light, nature and places to gather, creating a site of social connection and natural beauty. Group therapy and individualised plans would be available to each resident, who would be expected to stay from three to six months and then receive aftercare as they reintegrate into the world.
Kyrie Farm is now an operational farm on a beautiful 57-acre property where volunteers work and sell vegetable boxes; work on the wider ambitions for it to become a residential mental health community is still under way.
It has received corporate donations which have enabled it to buy the land and set up the farm, but it still needs significant funding to reach its goals which it is hoping to raise from investor schemes, government funding, philanthropic donations and public donations. The current plan is to fundraise enough to complete the Co Kildare site – but John and the team believe the model could prove transformative and expansive, with the hope of several similar farms being built across the country.
For John and Vicky, the existence of a place like Kyrie Farm could have made all the difference to Kieran.
“Our challenge for Kieran was when Kieran left John of Gods and went into sort of weekly sessions at Lucena clinic. John of Gods was not the right place for his recovery, but also home was not the right place for him because he was stuck in his bedroom, with Vicky almost policing the place because he was trying to self-medicate and different things.”
Hospital stays are getting shorter and the threshold of care is getting higher, so people are very, very unwell before they even get into hospital, and the amount of time they can spend there is very limited because of the pressure on the system
— Dr Eoin Galavan
John admits that for Vicky in particular, who was a stay-at-home mother, trying to care for someone with severe depression was incredibly difficult – a challenge many families have faced. Places such as Gould Farm and Kyrie Farm provide support for people who need ongoing mental health support, instead of placing that burden on family members who don’t have professional training and are juggling other responsibilities needed to keep their families afloat.
“It’s the tragedy of families that do have to try and find solutions because our system just isn’t good enough,” says John.
Dr Eoin Galavan, a clinical and counselling psychologist who has worked in adult mental healthcare for more than 20 years, is the clinical lead of Kyrie Farm, as well as being on its board of directors. He believes that providing people with mental health challenges with a healing and supportive environment is vital.
“A significant issue in our current system is that, particularly for people coming out of psychiatric hospital, the readmission rate is very high,” he says. “Over 60 per cent of admissions are readmissions.
“There’s huge pressure on those systems. We have one of the lowest bed rates in the OECD. We have very low consultantship rates. So that part of the system, even though it’s the part of the system that’s most relied on, is still very limited. And that means that hospital stays are getting shorter and the threshold of care is getting higher, so people are very, very unwell before they even get into hospital, and the amount of time they can spend there is very limited because of the pressure on the system.
“So it means that when people come out of hospital, they’re often not ready to go home. That’s where Kyrie farm seeks to step into things – in between acute psychiatric care and care at home with the community – and we’re doing that not only by providing a residential environment but a much broader and different philosophical approach to mental healthcare.”
Galavan says everyone working in mental healthcare in Ireland is aware of the existing system’s limitations and the need for other options, but what makes Kyrie Farm special is that “this is a solution that has the scale and scope to make a really significant impact”.
“Personally, I’ve always wanted something to be different,” he says. “I got a phone call from John about five years ago and I’m delighted I took the call. I feel very lucky to be involved in this project, because it’s full of wonderful people, and I think it could have a significant transformative impact.”
For more information, visit KyrieFarm.ie
Support services
If you or a family member are experiencing mental health challenges and are looking for support, the following resources are available:
The HSE National Counselling Service (NCS)
Samaritans
Samaritans services are available 24 hours a day, for confidential, non-judgmental support.
Freephone 116 123, any time.
Text About It
Text About It is a free, 24/7 service, providing everything from a calming chat to immediate support for your mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Free-text HELLO to 50808 for an anonymous chat with a trained volunteer, any time.
Turn2Me
Free online counselling and online support groups for young people aged 12 to 17 and adults.
Aware
Information, support and peer groups for people experiencing anxiety, mild to moderate depression, bipolar disorder and mood-related conditions. Support also for friends and family members.
Freephone 1800 804848, 10am to 10pm every day.
Shine
Support services for people living with mental health difficulties and their families.
LGBT Ireland
Phone or online support for the LGBTI+ community – by phone, instant messaging or at peer support groups.
Freephone 1800 929 539 – Monday to Thursday 6.30pm to 10pm, Friday 4pm to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 4pm to 6pm.
Pieta
Free individual counselling, therapy and support for people who self-harm or are thinking about suicide and people who have been bereaved by suicide.
Bodywhys
Services for adults and young people with eating disorders, and their families. Services include email and helpline support, online chat support groups for various groups, virtual video support groups and family programmes.
Phone 01 2107906 – Monday, Wednesday and Sunday from 7.30pm to 9.30pm, and Saturday from 10.30am to 12.30pm.
Grow Mental Health
Grow provides weekly meetings in locations all over Ireland to help people recover from various forms of mental health problems. Additional practical resources and information are available.
Traveller Counselling Service
Counselling supports for people in the Traveller community.
Connect Counselling
Telephone counselling service for survivors of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, including former residents of mother and baby homes. You can talk in confidence with a trained counsellor.
Freephone 1800 477 477, 5pm to 9pm every day.
Minding Creative Minds
Free 24/7 wellbeing and support programme for people in the Irish creative sector, including counselling.
Freephone 1800 814 244.
