Hansard

I am grateful for the opportunity to return to an issue that I first brought to the chamber in 1999. Progress has been made since I asked that first question, when more deaths of males under 35 in the preceding year had been due to suicide—268—than to motor vehicle accidents and drugs combined.

As we have heard, between 2002 and 2006, and 2013 and 2017, suicide rates fell by 20 per cent. In 2017, 680 deaths of people of all ages were recorded as probable suicides, which was down 7 per cent on the previous year.

However, every death represents an unimaginable loss, and we should never regard suicide as an inevitable outcome. That is why an ambitious target of a 20 per cent reduction in suicide rates by 2022 places the issue at the top of the Government’s agenda. We can never be complacent regarding this fundamental public health issue.

I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to funding refreshed mental health and suicide prevention training. The key theme that emerged from the Government’s engagement with people who have been affected by suicide was that mental health training should be a central and compulsory component of our working culture, and not merely an afterthought. The references to our staff in the speeches from Bob Doris and Monica Lennon are significant in that debate. The point about training is true for not just GPs and NHS staff but other front-line services including pharmacists, jobcentre and benefits advisors, teachers, college and university staff, and transport workers. Each person should feel confident supporting people in distress.

With regard to teachers and schools, See Me Scotland found recently that only 37 per cent of young people would tell someone if they were finding it difficult to cope with their mental health. That is particularly worrying because half of mental health problems in adulthood begin before the age of 14. Our teachers cannot and should not be expected to broach the challenge alone. That is why I was delighted to hear in last week’s programme for government that ministers will invest more than £60 million in additional school counselling services, which will create about 350 counsellors in education across Scotland and ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services. Early intervention is crucial in mental health and suicide prevention, so I am pleased that every young person in Scotland will have access to trained professionals who can identify and support people who are at risk.

I note the strategy’s commitment to encouraging a co-ordinated approach to public awareness campaigns that maximises impact and breaks down stigma. In addition, I believe that our media should take cognisance of their role in preventing suicide. Mental health experts advise that exposure to media coverage of a high-profile suicide—particularly coverage that fixates gratuitously on graphic details of a person’s death—can lead to more suicides, which is a phenomenon that is known as suicide contagion.

Organisations such as Samaritans offer very useful guidance on reporting suicide. However, we saw the dangerous effects of journalists choosing to ignore such advice following the tragic deaths of the 55-year-old fashion designer Kate Spade and the 28-year-old DJ Avicii earlier this year. Just hours after police announced that they had died, many news outlets reported graphic details of their suicides.

Although many studies have explored the dangers of such reporting, the evidence is not merely anecdotal. In the four months that followed Robin Williams taking his own life, the American suicide rate rose by 10 per cent. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the rise was especially dramatic among middle-aged men, who identified particularly with Mr Williams. It is not just a question of ethical reporting or hypotheticals, but of real lives lost.

Suicide, like many other causes of death, is indirectly linked to a variety of factors that help us to remain in good health, including education, family income, our communities and childhood experiences. It is therefore positive that the leadership group will identify specific actions to protect population groups that are at greater risk of suicide. As each of us knows, and as I have mentioned, suicide among young men is a particular concern in Scotland, and the rate for young men increased for the third consecutive year in 2017. That trend must be reversed as a matter of urgency.

We must also be mindful of where physical illness intersects with suicide. As convener of the cross-party group on epilepsy, I have learned about how life with epilepsy can be made more difficult due to a lack of understanding and the stigma that is associated with the condition. In addition, some areas of the brain that are responsible for seizures also affect mood, which can lead to depression, and seizure medication might also contribute to mood changes. Tragically, people with epilepsy are five times more likely to commit suicide than the general population, despite the excellent support that is offered by third sector organisations including Quarriers and Epilepsy Scotland.

I agree with the strategy’s guiding sentiment that mental health must be on a par with physical health. However, we cannot ignore the fact that, in many cases, one greatly influences the other. I hope that that is something that the new leadership group will examine and take forward.

The strategy does not exist in a vacuum of mental health policy; rather, it must move forward in parallel with other complementary strategies. Our national strategy to tackle social isolation and loneliness makes Scotland one of the first countries in the world to develop a strategy to address an issue that is intrinsically linked to suicide.

We owe it to every family who has lost a loved one to suicide to do better. I am sure that many of them will want to know what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that lessons are learned from their loss. Alongside the evidence of what helps to prevent suicide, the lived experience of the people who have been affected by it, which was gathered at the Government’s engagement events, should provide the real basis for our action. Those families know that preventable suicide in Scotland will end not with one strategy but with years of concerted national and local effort. We must continually ensure that we have the leadership and resources in place to meet our 2022 target, thereby saving around 140 lives per year.

I hope that colleagues around the chamber will join me in committing never to let suicide prevention fall off the political agenda. We can and must do more.