On average, someone commits suicide in England every two hours. That’s over 4,200 suicides a year. That figure may shock you. But what is just as shocking is that a lesbian, gay or bisexual person is twice as likely as a heterosexual person to self harm
I was drawing this awful statistic to people’s attention because Monday was World Suicide Prevention Day. It was also the occasion for me to the launch the Government’s new Suicide Prevention Strategy – the first for ten years. It is based on evidence of what works. Credit is due to Paul Burstow who worked hard to make this happen.
Just one death to suicide is one too many. It can be something of a taboo subject – perhaps one reason why the figure I quoted above comes as such a surprise – and I want to make suicide prevention everyone’s business. We are working alongside almost fifty national organisations, including the Samaritans, to help reduce the suicide rate in England and provide better support for those who have been bereaved or affected by suicide. There are six key areas:
- Research to gain a better understanding of why people take their own life and how it can be prevented – supported by £1.5million new Government funding.
- Working with the media and with the internet industry to help parents ensure their children are not accessing harmful suicide-related websites
- Reducing opportunities for suicide, by making sure prisons and mental health facilities keep people safer
- Better support for high-risk groups such as those with mental health problems and people who self-harm
- Improving services for groups like children and young people and ensuring the mental health needs of those with long-term conditions are being met
- Providing better information and support to those bereaved or affected by suicide
Some groups, such as LGBT are particularly vulnerable, including those with a history of self harm.
Pace Youth Network, which runs groups and services for LGBT young people in and around London, found that 34% of the young people they work with had attempted suicide, harmed themselves or thought about harming themselves in the six months prior to accessing support.
Part of the £1.5million Government funding will go towards research on how to reduce the risk of suicide for people with a history of self harm; how self harm can be better managed in children and young people generally; and how best to tailor interventions to improve the mental health of specific groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
People often ask what we are achieving in Government. Currently ten families a day suffer the shock and bereavement of the suicide of a loved one. As far as I am concerned, that is ten too many – and anything we can do in Government to reduce that figure is something worthwhile, and something we should be talking about.
* Norman Lamb is MP for North Norfolk and was Liberal Democrat Minister of State at the Department of Health until May 2015. He now chairs the Science and Technology Select Committee
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26 Comments
Do we, as Liberals, not back someone’s right to end their own life if they so wish?
Of course, we should try to tackle the causes of suicide and provide support but should we be pushing to actively try and prevent people from having the physical means to commit the act (as in prisons, etc.) or censoring sites which promote suicide by placing them on the child-pornography block list?
There have been studies that show that around 41% – 50% + of transsexual people have attempted suicide,
quote A staggering 41% of (transsexual ) respondents reported attempting suicide
compared to 1.6% of the general population,ii with rates rising for
those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in
school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of
physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%). unquote
from http://transequality.org/PDFs/Executive_Summary.pdf
This is far more likely to be due to generalised social transphobia than trans people quote wishing unquote to end their lives.
Suicide is the tip of the iceberg of depression. Things need to change, but we also need to see things in perspective. On average, a million people die in the UK every year, equivalent to about 2,500 every day, or one every 30 seconds.
My answer to Thomas Long above is that we should be doing everything possible to prevent suicide – including improving quality of life and changing attitudes. Human life is important. And social factors ARE an influence.
If one suicide is too many, then why do our MPs support in words and in votes the ongoing fiasco that is the DWP/ATOS removing benefits from very sick and disabled people? After all, there have been several suicides due to the new benefits regime this government supports. The stress of losing one’s claim, the uncertainty of waiting up to a year for their appeal on much-reduced benefits only to be called back for ANOTHER assessment a couple months after the appeal is won is doing untold damage to many people, especially those who may already be suicidal due to serious depression or mental illness.
Paul Burstow wrote a similar article on here recently, going on about how the coalition will help those with mental illnesses. So, on one hand we say we will help them, while on the other hand we put them through an unscientific, medically dubious tick-box “examination” which is often performed by people with little knowledge of mental illness.
My kingdom for a government that is joined up, compassionate and free of hypocrisy!
I have been working on the subject of suicide within a relationship breakdown, what we call the Red Mist Syndrome. Only a few weeks ago, and father and his two boys died. Of course, this should be looked into, How can a loving parent kill their children? I do not in anyone judge what has happened, could it been avoided? He was not the first, and most certainly we should find out what is happening , in the troubled mind in this situation.
At the green party conference their new leader has been talking about refocusing their agenda from the state of the environment on to the ‘mental health’ of people. I don’t think mental health is the right phrase but it was along those lines.
I think this is a wise move on their part and we should copy it. Good, evidence based, responsive governance with power devolved where it possible for it to be so and made transparent where it is organised at higher levels is an important component of that so we’re on those lines already.
Re depression and suicide I’d like to draw attention to Sane’s black dog campaign and I’d also like to give credit to the MPs who’ve been speaking out on issues associated with mental ill health.
I thought the Greens conference showed their true colours as verdant socialists.
i believe the term is watermelons. 😀
And yet this coalition has CAUSED suicides by taking away benefits from sick people and causing them such despair and it is going to get worse. When are you going to face up to your culpability? Talk about hypocrisy!
Who commits suicide, mainly?
Is it really the people whose benefits are cut?
Or is suicide more complicated than that?
Are there any demographic, statistical, or other analyses available? Any evidence?
Mental health and mental wellbeing should be core issues in discussions of suicide prevention.
Someone struggling with mental health is likely to need disability support through benefits. It seems the current support through benefits is not fit for purpose, leaving people in need dependent on charity food banks when they have paid national insurance all their lives.
Could I ask if there are any figures if there are any figures on the subject of deaths in the area of relationship breakdowns ? this has been a concern for sometime.
@Anne
that’s an outrageous and scurrilous partisan accusation which is offensive to all victims of suicide.
By it’s nature as a tragic occurrence, to ascribe objective ’causes’ to death by one’s own hand is plainly wrong and irresponsible. I call on you to apologise.
oranjepan , to ascribe objective ’causes’ to death by one’s own hand is plainly wrong and irresponsible
Oh I don’t think so. Make the lives of a group of people difficult enough, deprived of work, food, housing, money, more of them will commit suicide. It’s not direct – some people won’t, but more will. I think that’s causal.
“By it’s nature as a tragic occurrence, to ascribe objective ’causes’ to death by one’s own hand is plainly wrong and irresponsible.”
Why should the fact that an event is “tragic” imply that objective causes can’t be ascribed to it?
And is it really so unreasonable to suggest that benefit cuts tend to increase the suicide rate? Surely if you’re going to be involved in politics it’s important to face up to the fact that government policies can have bad effects on people’s lives as well as good ones, and to recognise that we’re talking about the lives of real people – the ones you see walking down the street every day.
Political activism isn’t like some fantasy role-playing game that doesn’t impinge on the real world.
jenny, I strongly disagree.
What the blamers are attempting to describe is not causality, but retrospective justification for twisted political martyrdom.
Every suicide is a tragedy, not evidence to support a misguided ideology.
“What the blamers are attempting to describe is not causality …”
Surely that’s precisely what’s at issue. Do you have any evidence as to whether it’s the case, one way or another?
Is it intrinsically unlikely? Don’t some people commit suicide because of financial problems? And haven’t some people’s financial problems been made worse because of benefit cuts?
Isn’t this essentially the same issue as health spending, or foreign aid? Obviously lives could be saved by spending more. Politicians decide on our behalf where to draw the line. Surely that has to be acknowledged.
Gee, what a mess. People imagining, no-one looking at any actual data. Maybe you lot would commit suicide if your benefits were cut, but what is out in the real world is NOT YOU. Why not get off your lazy butts and go outside and find out what the real world is like? .
The lack of sensitivity many LibDems have shown towards those who are being hit the most by their cuts is sometimes staggering. I am in complete agreement with @Chris: too many of you talk about the cuts and their effects on people as some sort of abstract or theoretical issue, something that will hurt other people but not themselves. It seems too many LDs are more interested in winning petty arguments and beating their political opponents than recognising the things they argue about are causing real pain.
The fact is that suicides and deaths due the new benefits regime, which our MPs cheered at the 2010 spending review, as well as voted for en masse, are real and happening. The DWP has had to issue its own guidelines to their staff on how to handle threats or actual suicides: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/08/jobcentre-staff-guidelines-suicide-threats. I don’t recall any other government departments (apart from, obviously mental health services in the NHS) having to take such action. And to those who doubt that anyone could be so broken, destitute or desperate to take their own life when their benefits are cut (and are too ill to find other sources of income), here are a few examples:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/author-s-suicide-due-to-slash-in-benefits-1-1367963
http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Woman-drowned-drain-upset-health-check/story-12927176-detail/story.html
http://www.thisishampshire.net/news/9095159.Jobseeker_took_own_life
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2011/11/08/bedworth-suicide-pact-couple-found-lying-side-by-side-92746-29739580/
I think some people need to acknowledge that many of our policies are not only hurting people, but ending in the most tragic of ways. Trying to diminish, ignore or make excuses for this is, pretty much, what the odious New Labour would have done. This is not “political martyrdom”, @Oranjepan and to label it as such as incredibly insensitive. These are people whose lives have been ruined by government policy. We’re LibDems: when are we going to take responsibility for our own actions and the harm they are causing?
@Richard Dean:
I know what the world is like for the poorest and desperate, thank you very much. Working at a charity that gives advice on benefits, housing and is struggling to cope with the amount of people needing food parcels due to benefit cuts is indeed the real world. I am, effectively, helping to clean up the mess the previous government, and this one, are willingly making to those who cannot defend themselves. I’ve seen seriously mentally ill people who cannot hold down normal work due to their conditions who are already living on next to nothing having their benefits stopped. Imagine you are someone with schizophrenia and vulnerable who has just been told, against the evidence from their GP and mental health specialist, that they are “fit for work” by the DWP/ATOS, had their benefits stopped and face losing their home. What do you think this would do to someone who is already unstable? And what chance do seriously mentally ill people have of holding down a normal job? And further, how many employers would chose them over the masses of able-bodied people looking for work? This is not an isolated case, it is happening all the time.
And some of you here want to question that this could ever happen. Thank god WE have our mental faculties and are able to deal with life like “normal” people. Some of you would do well to remember, religious or not, “there but for the grace of God…”
It’s amazing that after a somewhat heartening post from Norman Lamb I am completely disheartened by the comments thread on this.
Every suicide is underpinned by some desperate situation that can be ’caused’ by any number of things, be they relationship breakdown, financial instability, depression and so many other things. Our policies in government will almost certainly have ’caused’ suicides, as did the policies of the previous government and probably every government before then.
What I think we should be acknowledging and supporting from Norman’s article is:
1. That this is something being looked at and studied, as people have mentioned on here we need to better understand suicide so that we can move forward – This will now start to happen but it’s a complex process and one that we’ve never (as a society) talked about or looked into
2. There will be better information and support for those bereaved by suicide – Shortly before Christmas my own father took his life and the information and support for my family and I was pretty much non-existent at what was a horrific time for us.
Norman Lamb and Paul Burstow I salute you for your efforts with this. If there is ANYTHING that I can do to help in this area I would be more than willing to.
Thank you
Ahem, suicide is an obvious topic for inspiring passionate responses.
So let me be clear – people who commit suicide do so because they decide to commit suicide. Despite how they may feel or are told to feel, nobody is compelled to do so (that would be homicide) – causality is a completely false claim in this instance.
I do not dispute that there are people who are making bad decisions with tragic consequences. That is no reason to make false claims and incorrect justifications.
Well, my remarks yesterday were a bit sharp, sorry, but I stick to my main point, that we won’t help other people if we use their problems as ways to express or resolve our own ones. We need to look outside ourselves, and not assume that the depression that we might feel over loss of income would necessarily make someone else suicidal.
An interesting fact provides by the Office for National Statistics is that, in 2010, there were 4231 suicides of men, and only 1377 suicides of women. Are men more affected by benefits than women? Probably not, so perhaps benefits has actually got relatively little to do with suicide. Norman Lamb’s assertion that people with sexual identity challenges are more likely to suicide suggests that identity stress may be a particular cause.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2010/stb-statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Suicide-rates
It seems that Oxford University are studying suicide and may come up with ways to help people.
http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/statistics.html
Of course it is a person’s right to end their own life, but it seems a lot more helpful to view suicide as an unwanted outcome.
oranjepan quote Every suicide is a tragedy, not evidence to support a misguided ideology. unquote
you disagree that there is any causation. Ok. Is there any evidence that would convince you that there is causation? I could be convinced there wasn’t if, for example, the lives of a group of people known to have a high suicide rate were considerably improved – and the suicide rate stayed the same. But your view is that it’s all just random?
Do you have similar views about economics? If people get paid more, do they spend more, or is what people spend random too?
“So let me be clear – people who commit suicide do so because they decide to commit suicide. Despite how they may feel or are told to feel, nobody is compelled to do so (that would be homicide) – causality is a completely false claim in this instance.”
But of course on that basis smoking doesn’t “cause” lung cancer, because not everyone who smokes develops lung cancer. Nevertheless, most people accept there is a causal link, for which there is clear statistical evidence.
Frankly I think if people are disposed to deny – without evidence – that there’s a similar causal link between financial hardship and suicide, then they are the ones who need to learn more about the “real world”.