Hansard

Presiding Officer, you have just sent me a note asking me to curb my speech, and I have about four minutes over. If members wish to raise issues during their speeches, I will be happy to respond to them in my closing speech.

Our mental health strategy sets out our guiding ambition

“that we must prevent and treat mental health problems with the same commitment ... as we do with physical health problems.”

People should only have to ask once to get help fast. That ambition also applies to supporting people who are at risk of suicide.

Our existing suicide prevention strategy sets out commitments under five broad themes, which encapsulate the overall aims of the strategy: responding to people in distress, talking about suicide, improving the response of the national health service to suicide, developing the evidence base, and supporting change and improvement.

We cannot say with certainty that any single action has had a direct causal link to the reduction in the suicide rate. However, we have provided funding and policy direction for a number of initiatives that are designed to improve support for people at risk of suicide. For example, NHS Health Scotland’s national suicide prevention programme has been working nationally and locally to build skills through training, to improve knowledge and awareness of good suicide prevention practice and to encourage improved co-ordination between services.

We have provided funding to Samaritans, including a current grant to help Samaritans with the increased telephone charges that are being experienced as a result of its helpline now being free to access. Breathing space is a free telephone service for people who are experiencing low mood, depression or anxiety. It handles about 6,000 to 7,000 calls per month. Although breathing space was originally set up to respond to the fact that about 70 per cent of deaths by suicide are by males, it provides a valuable service that is accessible to everyone.

NHS living life is a free telephone psychological therapy service, which is available out of hours to adults who are feeling low, anxious or depressed. Like breathing space, the service is run for us by NHS 24. Last month, I visited staff who work on breathing space and NHS living life. It was good to learn how those early interventions can support people to deal with a range of mental health conditions. I announced £500,000 of development funding to improve the services that NHS 24 offers to people who are experiencing mental health problems.

In recent years, GPs and other clinicians have developed improved knowledge, recognition and treatment of depression and anxiety. At the same time, anti-stigma work by see me has vastly improved public understanding of mental health. People now feel more comfortable about coming forward for help when they need it, so more people receive appropriate treatment and support for depression and anxiety.

Members will know of our work with partners to develop the innovative distress brief intervention. The DBI is about equipping people with skills and support to manage their own health and prevent future crisis. The pilot is being developed in Lanarkshire, Aberdeen, Inverness and the Scottish Borders. National partners include Police Scotland, the Scottish Ambulance Service and NHS 24.

Those are all strong examples of our work with partners to help to reduce the rate of suicide in Scotland. That partnership approach is crucial to suicide prevention.

It is worth remembering the role that we can all play in listening to friends, family and colleagues who may need an empathetic ear to speak about worries or ill health. Last year, NHS 24’s breathing space team ran an awareness-raising programme called the year of listening. I was pleased to learn last week of a new initiative by Network Rail, Samaritans and British Transport Police called small talk saves lives, which encourages the public to support those who may be in emotional crisis around them on the railway network. Listening carefully and providing support can help people to feel a stronger sense of connection, which helps to support confidence and wellbeing.

We all agree that Scotland’s children represent our country’s future. Children and young people should have an understanding that it may not always be possible to enjoy good mental health and that, if that happens, support is available. Some local authorities provide school-based counselling. In others, schools use pastoral care staff and liaise with educational psychological services and health services for specialist support. Every school has a named contact in specialist child and adolescent mental health services, who can be contacted if they have concerns about a pupil. We continue to support Childline, which provides confidential advice and information to children and young people who are affected by bullying and related issues. That forms part of our wider attempts to improve the wellbeing of children and young people through curriculum for excellence.

We intend to publish a new suicide prevention action plan in 2018. To inform development of that plan, the first three in a series of pre-engagement events have been run for us by NHS Health Scotland, Samaritans and the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. Those events allow us to hear from people who have been affected by suicide and from those who directly engage with those affected by suicide, so as to help understand what might be done better or differently to reduce suicide and the impact that it has on those left behind. I look forward to seeing the report on those events in January. That will help to inform development of a draft action plan, which we will publish on our website as part of a wider engagement process in early spring 2018. We hope to publish a final version in late spring 2018.

Early emerging themes from delegates at the first few pre-engagement events include the scale and scope of training and support offered to healthcare and other professionals who engage with those who are at increased risk of suicide, and the importance of public health approaches to improve our willingness and ability to respond to those in distress, including awareness raising for everyone. While we cannot pre-empt what might emerge over the full engagement process, those are helpful pointers.

In recent years, we have had extensive stakeholder discussions, which have helped to inform the content of the mental health strategy and the development of the DBI. We will continue those discussions as we work towards a new suicide prevention action plan; we know from them that many stakeholders would like, for example, to see a reinvigorated focus on local suicide prevention action. Currently, each local authority area has a locally agreed suicide prevention action plan and most areas have a local suicide prevention co-ordinator, who can be a crucial element in driving forward effective suicide prevention action. We recognise the need for strong local action, which we will consider as part of the engagement process.

Nevertheless, there are already many examples of good local practice to support suicide prevention. For example, in North East Scotland, collaborative work between Aberdeenshire Council, Aberdeen City Council, NHS Grampian, Police Scotland, Cruse Bereavement Care and Samaritans has seen a reduction in the rate of death by suicide in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire by 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively over the past decade. In March 2016, as part of the local suicide prevention campaign, they developed an app to signpost help and advice sites to users who research ideas about suicide. In recognition of that work, choose life north-east won an innovation award and care for mental health award at this year’s Scottish health awards; some of my colleagues were there to see it.

I could go into other examples, but I will not as I need to be as brief as possible. In January, I will visit a partnership group of NHS 24, ScotRail, British Transport Police, FirstBus and others to look at mental health improvement and suicide prevention for employees and customers across a range of sectors. The next suicide prevention action plan can provide opportunities to share and replicate such examples of good practice across Scotland.

I note the Conservative and Labour amendments, which the Presiding Officer has accepted for debate, and I am minded to accept them. Most of all, I look forward to hearing members’ views on this important topic over the debate.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that every suicide is a tragedy, and extends its sympathy to all those bereaved in this devastating manner; supports the partnership and co-operation across the NHS, health and social care sector, Police Scotland, Scottish Ambulance Service, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the third sector, which have contributed to a 17% reduction in the suicide rate in the last decade; considers that Scotland can go further and learn more about this complex area; calls for individuals and local communities to be heard in the Scottish Government’s public engagement process to develop a new suicide prevention action plan, based on evidence, to continue the downward trend in suicides, and commends and reiterates key messages learned from practice and research that suicide is preventable, that it is everyone’s business and that collaborative working is key to successful suicide prevention.