Meeting of the Parliament 21 November 2017
Suicide is not a crime; it is a choice. For more than 700 people in any given year in Scotland, it represents the only choice—that last vestige of control that they have left to them. As a Liberal, I will always defend the right of someone to make such a decision, but I wish with all that I have that we could provide support enough that there was always a better choice for them to make.
Suicide is an option that, for some, no intervention will prevent, but we have to recognise that many of those lost to us might have chosen a different path had they only received help when they first needed it.
Therefore, I welcome the debate today. In particular, I thank the Minister for Mental Health, Maureen Watt, for making an effort last week to foster a spirit of consensus around the motion in her name. Suicide is absolutely one of the issues around which we should coalesce, stripping out any kind of partisan alignment and always—always—seeking agreement.
Although we support the Government motion and the amendments thereto, we cannot allow our efforts to be undermined by complacency. That is what I would have asked Maureen Watt to say, had she taken my intervention, because the motion fails to recognise that we are falling behind on this issue. I use the term “complacency” because although the motion speaks to suicide as a national trend that has, thankfully, dropped since the introduction of the choose life campaign, it makes no mention of the 8 per cent rise in the suicide rate last year, which James Jopling, director of Samaritans in Scotland, has described as a troubling “early warning sign”.
I associate myself with Alison Johnston’s remarks and with her dismay that there is no mention of self-harm in the motion. Suicide and self-harm are inexorably linked.
The Government’s efforts to tackle our mental health crisis, through the national mental health strategy, were delayed by over a year. When that strategy was published, it was met with tepid enthusiasm from stakeholders. I do not think that it is unfair to ask for something better from the equally delayed national suicide strategy.
As we have heard, the human cost of suicide is staggering. It tears a rent through families and communities. Although it is classless, it is far more likely in areas of deprivation. Although it is ageless, it seems to take the young more than the old. Although it is indiscriminate as to gender, it is far more common in men. Indeed, it is, as we have heard, the principal cause of death in men under the age of 50, outstripping cancer and cardiac arrest. That is heartbreaking. It is widely known that suicide can be a result of a cultural reality whereby men tend to bottle things up or are not always taught to share, but that is not the whole picture. Many seek help but what is available to them—if anything is available to them—is just not enough.
Although there is no doubt that many men and women choose to take their lives without any prior suggestion that they are in difficulty, many more come forward for help. Seventy per cent of those who have taken their own lives sought medical assistance at some point in the preceding year. A quarter had been through A and E in the three months leading up to their death, and 60 per cent had a mental health medication prescribed to them in the preceding year. Put simply, many of those people are known to us. They are coming forward but are not getting the help that they need.
What needs to change? We need to get it right earlier—and I was gratified to hear the minister’s remarks in that regard. We need to answer SAMH’s call to radically invest in support for child and adolescent mental health services. We need to train teachers to recognise mental health issues in their classrooms and to equip their schools with properly trained school counsellors, and we need to replicate that approach across colleges and universities. We need to better respond to the reality in surgeries that a quarter of general practitioner appointments are made as a result of an underlying mental health condition.
Suicides are tragedies that stalk the homes and streets of every community in our nation. I have seen at first hand the cost of our failure, and that will haunt me until the end of my days. I therefore wish to use all of the days that I have left to me in the Parliament to see us answer that failure.
The English novelist Sally Brampton wrote:
“We don’t kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive.”
In the Parliament, we make many decisions to help people with ailments of the body to stay alive, but we do not seem to be as good at helping people to endure through hidden mental ill-health. I thank the Government for seeking to build consensus on this unbelievably tragic and desperate issue, as we need unanimity around a solution, and we will agree to support the Government’s motion tonight. However, we will continue to challenge the Government when we find it wanting in relation to finding an answer to this fundamental issue in our society.
16:05