My constituency of Bridgend had a high-profile number of deaths by suicide several years ago. At the time I felt that I had to understand why this had happened, and what we could do to stop it from happening again – I spoke with academics, police officers, campaign groups, bereaved families and workers on the front-line of health and social services. I learned that every single death by suicide is a tragedy of a wasted future, bringing a scar to the lives of their families and friends. This should motivate all of us to prevent future deaths.
With those thoughts in mind, the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, which I chair, recently published a report into what action local authorities are taking to prevent people from taking their own lives. What we found shocked me. A third of all local authorities in England have no suicide prevention plan or action group whatsoever. This is in spite of the government’s own advice recommending that all local authorities should have both of these in place.
More worrying still was the attitude we found surrounding suicide. Despite not being illegal since 1961, we still hear more often of people ‘committing’ suicide. While great progress has been made on mental health, with people far more willing to openly discuss problems than in the past, no such advance has been seen on suicide. Indeed, one of the public health professionals who gave evidence to the all-party group told us how he could fill a room with a meeting about mental health but if he held a meeting about suicide, nobody was interested.
All of this comes in the wake of new figures showing that 7,336 people died by suicide across the United Kingdom in 2013. The suicide rate is on the rise, having been in decline for many years, and I am angered and frustrated to see local authorities failing to provide leadership. We are not talking about something that costs a great deal of money. Prevention plans and action groups require little money, but lots of time and effort. That time and effort is being put in in some parts of the country, but not in others.
Despite the failure of many local authorities, active third-sector groups such as the Samaritans, as well as individuals touched by suicide, are offering all the support they can to those struggling to cope with life and to bereaved families. Police officers and frontline workers too are trying to save lives and responding to desperate people on a daily basis. But even with their hard work, the government has to step up and fulfill its responsibilities.
The government knows that this is a problem but they are choosing to ignore it. Although the current care minister, Norman Lamb, and his predecessor have both been sympathetic to the all-party group, too often the Department of Health has refused to take action to speak to those local authorities who are not doing enough to prevent these entirely-preventable deaths. During this week’s Westminster Hall debate which I convened on this matter, the care minister agreed to write to all local authorities who do not currently have prevention plans in place, but this is only a small part of what needs to be done.
The figures recently released are already out of date. Too many local authorities are not conducting proper suicide audits or collecting correct data. Without a national drive to ensure that all local authorities have proper suicide prevention plans and action groups in place, as well as a process for data collection, we will continue to see these entirely preventable deaths occur. Above all, we need to end the stigma that continues to surround suicide. The progress that has been made on mental health in recent years has been so encouraging. Let us not waste that good work now by not putting the same focus onto suicide and self-harm prevention.
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Madeleine Moon is member of parliament for Bridgend and chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention. She tweets @MadeleineMoon
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