Youth Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Support
Debate between Pete Wishart and Frank McNally(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Frank McNally (Coatbridge and Bellshill) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wishart, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist).
In my local authority of North Lanarkshire, we have suicide rates above the Scottish national average, and we know that young people face particular challenges. During 2024, 735 young people registered with the online mental health charity Kooth in North Lanarkshire alone, with 68% of logins outside normal working hours, demonstrating the importance of ensuring that support is available when young people actually need it.
I commend the tremendous work undertaken in North Lanarkshire to confront that challenge. The community partners there have made suicide prevention a priority and are working to ensure early intervention. Just last week, 150 young people at Ravenscraig regional sports centre took part in a netball and football tournament to raise awareness of suicide prevention.
These types of community partnerships can genuinely save lives, but local authorities and voluntary organisations cannot tackle this challenge alone, and often face difficult financial settlements. I encourage the Government and the Scottish Government to provide additional support to local authorities and third-sector organisations to ensure they have long-term certainty and can deliver the support needed as early as possible—long before young people reach that desperate stage.
Pete Wishart (in the Chair)
We can get two more speakers in if they take a minute each.