Suicide prevention is high priority

Every suicide tells a different but equally tragic story. Suicide prevention is a high priority for councils, which already provide a range of vital services that support the health and mental wellbeing of our communities.

However we need a root and branch overhaul of mental health services, which focuses on prevention and early intervention, particularly for children and young people.

It is also crucial that we have the right investment in mental health and suicide prevention services. Councils support the £1 billion being invested in the NHS by 2020 to address mental health, but there needs to be a similar commitment to invest in local government to help tackle mental illness and prevent suicide.

Councils have in place community-based suicide prevention plans but we can only really tackle the issue alongside other public and private organisations, such as schools, railway operators, supermarkets, hospitals and police stations.
Suicide is preventable, but it needs to be everybody’s business to work together to tackle this tragic loss of life.’

According to the charity The Mental Health Foundation, suicide is not a mental health problem in itself, but is linked to mental distress. The number of registered deaths in the UK from suicide in 2016 published this week by the Office for National Statistics,  show that

• In 2016, 5,688 suicides were recorded in Great Britain. Of these, 75% were male and 25% were female.
• Between 2003 and 2013, 18,220 people with mental health problems took their own life in the UK.
• Suicide is the most common cause of death for men aged 20-49 years in England and Wales.
• One person in fifteen had made a suicide attempt at some point in their life.
• The suicide rate in Scotland rose by 8% between 2015 and 2016, with 728 suicides registered in Scotland in 2016.