Meeting of the Parliament 21 January 2014
I was not going to take part in the debate but, with your indulgence Presiding Officer, I will make a short contribution.
Some members have already raised the point about a preponderance of males aged between 35 and 54 committing suicide. If it is not altogether understandable, we can see why people in that group might feel the most pressure. People reach an age at which they feel that they should have achieved something. They might well have done so, but in their minds they have not and they feel disappointment and pressure. That pressure might not come from outside; an individual might feel inside that he should have done something that he has not managed to do, despite the fact that he might be a very successful businessman or successful at something else.
Other people do not see that pressure that those people are feeling. Christine Grahame talked about Daniel Perry’s mother saying that he did not let things get to him. Often, other people do not know who we are. It might look as though we are coasting through life and everything is hunky-dory, but it could take just one thing to trigger a devastating action.
I do not think that those who are left behind are part of the Government’s suicide prevention strategy. Suicide might be a tragedy for a small group of people, but it can have a larger effect. I know of someone who found their friend who had committed suicide by using a hose on an exhaust pipe. Three days after he had gone missing, his friend found him. It happened a long time ago now, but the vision lives with his friend to this day. He has suffered mental health issues that were based on the stress that finding his friend caused.
Although it is important to have some sort of prevention strategy, suicide is sometimes not preventable—sometimes we just do not see it coming—and those who suffer because of the act of the person who has committed suicide need to be protected.
It is great to see the Government dealing with the stigma of mental ill health, and I congratulate the Government on the suicide prevention strategy and the work that it has done up to this point.
Many speakers have mentioned online attacks. It used to be that, when someone slagged someone else off, they slagged them to their face, or they might have sent a poison pen letter. An individual can now be publicly ridiculed for no reason whatsoever, and they do not even know who the people are so there is nothing that they can do. They cannot defend themselves against it. People retweet things and jump on any bandwagon. That individual then feels as though they are being assailed from all sides. They feel helpless and they feel useless and that is when they get to the stage of considering suicide.
It is important to note that the strategy will help in many ways, but it will not help in every way because people cannot always tell. Families can look after somebody and they are the ones who think that they know that person the best, but they are the ones who are the most shocked when that final action is taken.
I have seen a number of people who have suffered from this. Kevin Stewart talked earlier about people coming to see him. In the past six months, I have had a number of people coming in to my office who have attempted suicide and have talked about attempting it. One 17-year-old girl had tried to kill herself three times in the space of six to eight weeks, so it is not just us middle-aged and elderly men who are committing suicide or attempted suicide; it is people in the young group, too. They are finding the pressure of life so difficult—they might be finding it difficult to get a job or to get that boyfriend or girlfriend they think they have to have to be cool. We need to keep in mind that it is small things that can trigger those huge actions.
I welcome the strategy. Everybody has to play their part in this: everybody has to look at their own family and to watch their own friends. If they see a change in a family member’s or friend’s behaviour, they need to take note of it. Somebody earlier on—I think that it was Neil Findlay—mentioned the macho issue and how Scots males are not very good at interacting with each other about our emotions. Sometimes we have to put that aside and just take a chance. If we think that somebody does not look right, we have to ask the question—we have to ask them what is wrong. If we do not, sometimes what happens is that we live to regret not asking them—we find that it is too late.