Jigsaw Charity Sea Dip set for a splash

THE Jigsaw Sea Dip returns to Bray Seafront this year in a partnership between Tallaght-based Jigsaw Dublin South West and Jigsaw Wicklow on Sunday from 9:30 am.

Jigsaw Dublin South West covers Tallaght, Clondalkin, Lucan, Rathfarnham, parts of Templeogue and parts of Terenure, and is based out of St John’s House on High Street, and the local service are encouraging people to register for their annual charity dip this weekend.

Jigsaw offer free therapy to young people aged 12-25 either in-person or online across 15 locations in Ireland, and money raised from the charity dip will be used to fund these services.

The dip is in its third year after it first took place in 2024. Jigsaw DSW Youth and Community Engagement Worker Barry Dempsey noted that “mental health is something that affects everybody” and wanted to ensure the event would be something as many people as possible can get involved in.

The Youth and Community Engagement Worker said: “Everybody has different level of need, but mental health is something that affects everybody so we tried to come up with an event that would be accessible for families, for young people alike, and some of our service and community personnel to be able to come down and get into the water for a good cause – acknowledging that sense of connection, collaboration, community and craic.”

Some warm-up activities will take place before the annual dip, including yoga and a fun run, while a DJ with play tunes and information on Jigsaw will also be available, as well as some complementary sauna slots.

Barry noted that the mental health service’s wait times can fluctuate depending on the time of year.

Jigsaw take a community-focused approach to mental health through free workshops in schools, community training centres, Youthreaches, sports clubs and further education settings.

Currently, the local service’s waiting times reach around a month, and several young people have noted difficulties with the return to school.

“At the moment ,we’re at four-and-a-half weeks wait time, but we keep our services free, and we try to ensure that every person who rings Jigsaw, they get a phone call back.

“We’re quite proactive at trying to get back to people and ensure that parents feel heard in the need to have their young person supported.

“We would typically see changes in patterns of behaviour depending on what time during the year – right now, school has just gone back, and we’re seeing some difficulties for young people going back into school for a whole host of reasons.

“Could be the workload, could be peer groups, could be social media-related, could be rising levels of anxiety, could be some sort of depression.

“We’re not a crisis service, so we would seek to support young people really where they’re at by engaging in free therapy with a clinician, and we just seek to have better outcomes for young people across the island of Ireland, where their mental health is respected, and we have better outcomes.”