Young People: Suicide

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord on securing this debate on a critical and all too often overlooked subject. It is a source of huge pain for all those concerned, not just from the loss of life but for the family, friends and community in which the individual lived. A traumatic, violent death is bad, but when it is self-inflicted it is hugely confusing.

Of course, suicide is historically fraught with stigma—not least, I do not need to tell the noble and right reverend Lord, in the church. Some 20 years ago, when I had to formulate the “Health of the Nation” strategy, there were five areas where we wanted to see improvement, which the health service or government departments could not deliver but which required the co-operation of the community and the charities. Under mental health, my targets in 1992 were indeed reducing the overall suicide rate by at least 15% by 2000 and reducing the suicide rate of severely mentally ill people by at least 33% by then. However much prejudice there was against mentally ill patients at that time, the greatest danger that they posed was to themselves, and the rate of those officially receiving mental health care was appalling.

I do not want to encroach on the area of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, but in today’s environment the terrible loss of life in young offender institutions is of great concern, as is the extraordinary influence of the internet, which in one way can be a source of befriending those at risk of suicide but, it seems, has somehow been distorted, misused and abused to actually precipitate suicide events. It is my view that, rather like when the Member of Parliament for Worthing was very preoccupied with reducing road accidents, there was a time when more young people lost their lives in road traffic accidents. Now, of course, the figure for suicide is higher, and has been for some time.

A campaign to tackle that could not be done just by allocating money. I fall out with the noble and right reverend Lord for simply thinking that charities need more money so that they can abuse the Government further for not giving them more money. The answer here is more subtle and requires broad ownership.

In the voluntary sector I want to commend Cruse Bereavement Care, of which I am a patron. It provides support for those whose relations and friends have taken their own lives. As the noble and right reverend Lord touched on, the result is intense anger—how could the individual have done it?—shame and isolation. You can tell somebody that your relation died of cancer, but it is still very difficult to say it of suicide. There is guilt—what more could we have done? There is confusion—why?—and endless reproach. It is very hard to achieve a sense of peace when a close relation has taken their own life. As we know, there are all too many in our parliamentary family whose children have done that.

The parents of Charlie Waller set up a wonderful charity when their son took his life in 1998. It works with health, education and the private sector on tackling depression and giving practical advice to people whose children and friends might be thinking of suicide. These people might think, “If I mention suicide, will the individual go over the top and take their own life?”. Many people are uncertain what the toolbox is. Traditionally GPs were particularly poorly equipped in mental health skills, but they are improving.

I congratulate the Government very warmly. I have looked closely at the suicide prevention strategy. I think it is a tremendous step forward. It is in the context of the “No health without mental health” keystone of government policy in relation to health. I am not sure it is just a question of more money. I am sure that it is constantly reminding us that this is a critical issue, a serious threat to life that people should not be afraid to discuss and draw to other people’s attention. For that, again, I praise the noble and right reverend Lord.