Liberal Democrats are making sure that mental health stays in the headlines, and that our policies are linked in people’s minds with the issues. Today the focus has been on preventing suicide. Here was Nick Clegg speaking this morning:
He quotes the Samaritans:
The majority of people who feel suicidal don’t actually want to die, they just don’t want to live the life they have.
Nick wants the NHS to adopt an highly successful approach to preventing suicide that has been pioneered by the Henry Ford Medical Group in Detroit, where it has reduced the suicide rate amongst their patients by 75% in 4 years and now lies at zero. He calls on all parts of the NHS to commit to a target of zero suicides.
Merseycare NHS Trust in Liverpool is now trying out this approach, and, according to the BBC, they are going to:
- create a Safe from Suicide Team, a 24/7 group of experts which rapidly and thoroughly assesses patients who are having suicidal thoughts
- improve the care of people who present with self-harm injuries at accident and emergency units, offering them therapies on the spot and following up with them when they go home
- improve data collection on patients to get a better understanding of how and where patients are most at risk of suicide and then targeting resources at them
Other schemes are being pioneered in the south-west and east of England.
The announcement by Nick has been praised by The Telegraph, no less, and The Guardian.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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4 Comments
Nick says: ‘The majority of people who feel suicidal don’t actually want to die, they just don’t want to live the life they have…’ I would add, ‘left’.
I agree with this view and would also apply it to assisted suicide, including the terminally ill. The latter are often prescribed anti-depressants (my own auntie was for example). There is a good reason for this. Coming to terms with dying is a process and often those diagnosed with terminal illness can rally after being helped to deal with the mental consequence of diagnosis. This is well known by those who care for the dying eg: Hospice movement.
I do not think there is any reasonable distinction to make between suicide (eg: taking an overdose of drugs) and assisted suicide (drinking a lethal dose of drugs). Someone who attempts suicide is just as likely to be in sound mind as a terminally patient and both are highly likely to be depressed.
Bizarrely, the Falconer Bill does not require a full psychiatric assessment before a prescription of lethal drugs and yet there are Lib Dem Lords supporting his Bill.
The headlines this morning about suicide reduction hit me as a fantastic piece of work and made me proud of Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.
My 2 cents
While it may be preventable for example lock people in hospitals etc if a person is suicidal you would need to fix the problems, money, loss of family, loss of self worth, feeling a burden and largely unable to come to terms how to live without the importance of self respect. I agree that if a person is undergoing extreme stress measures may be put in place for reducing the stress or cognitive thought patterns may help but in my view preventing suicide can mean condemning a person to live worse than prison and we must remember the live belongs not to us but the person involved.
Helen
Many of those who attempt suicide are in fact mentally ill.
I will never forget the words of a terminal ill relative who was taken to a hospice.
She said to my father,”Take me home Roy I don’t want to die”.