We All Have Mental Health

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By Frances Beck

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been really heartened to see the large volume of conversations and campaigns about suicide awareness and prevention. I’m conscious that’s been the result of World Suicide Prevention Day. Those conversations will now fall away to be replaced by other topics, but as far as I’m concerned, every day should be Suicide Prevention Day.

Do Suicide Rates Fall During Highly Visible Campaigns?

The scientist in me would like to find out if the number of suicides falls during the time that the prevention campaigns are highly visible in the public eye. I hypothesise that they do. This is a time when the stigma reduces. Close family and friends are more aware of the signs that they should be looking for. People are slightly less frightened to broach the subject with their loved ones who they think might be struggling. It’s also a time when there is more awareness of the different organisations that provide crisis support and where to seek the appropriate advice and help. It seems intuitive that the number of people receiving support would rise and the number of suicides would fall.

Surely then, we should be pushing for greater suicide awareness and prevention every day of the year?

If Only…

However, therein lies a problem. Do we actually have the means of supporting every person with suicidal thoughts and ideation? The NHS certainly doesn’t as things stand at the moment. There has been a huge push in getting people to talk about how they are feeling as a way of preventing suicide. You can’t go very far on social media without seeing posts about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way of helping to reduce the stigma around mental health issues and suicide, but it’s not enough.

It’s only a small, albeit significant, step in the process of a person getting the support they need. It frustrates me when I see statements that infer that talking about how you feel WILL save your life. If only it was that simple! Yet another “if only…”.

False Sense Of Security

Conor openly talked to close family and friends about his depression and the way he was feeling and was under the care of his GP. Talking didn’t save him. He, himself, was under the impression that he should be feeling better because he was talking about how he felt and was frustrated that nothing seemed to be working for him.

The fact that he was talking about how he was feeling (although not the full extent as it later emerged), lulled me into a false sense of security in that I didn’t think for a minute that he would harm himself. The research that I’ve done since, has shown that suicide isn’t straightforward, but happens in “the perfect storm” when a number of complex factors all come together at the same time. As such, it’s really difficult to predict.

Suicide awareness and prevention

We should encourage people to talk about suicide. It is the first step in getting the right support. Yet, It’s really important that disclosure is met with compassion and understanding. That is the reason that all NHS staff, emergency services staff, teachers and school staff, and college and university staff, to name but a few, must receive mental health and suicide awareness and prevention training.

The next step is to get immediate crisis support. This should be followed by appropriate and timely ongoing support from mental health professionals. Sadly, there are reports that state this doesn’t happen. The NHS mental health services are not currently fit for purpose.

They are severely stretched and ill-resourced due to long-term underfunding. To make a real difference in suicide prevention, as well as an overall improvement in mental health, this needs to be addressed quickly and effectively by the people who hold the purse strings.

Mental Health As A Spectrum

We all have mental health in the same way that we all have physical health. It’s a spectrum. There can be one-off events that can hit anywhere across that spectrum. We can also have chronic events that, again, hit anywhere across the spectrum.

In other words, mental health affects every single person in the same way that physical health does. This is a huge issue that affects us all, not just the 1 in 4 affected at any one time! Mental health services need to be proportionately funded and we all need to push for that to happen.