National Summit Brings People Together To Tackle Suicide In Scotland

Choose Life, Scotland’s national strategy to prevent suicide, will host its fourth national summit in Edinburgh this week, which will bring together key people tasked with reducing Scotland’s suicide rate.

Opened by the Deputy Health Minister, Lewis Macdonald, this summit will be attended by more than 100 practitioners, policy makers and voluntary sector workers, from the Western Isles to Dumfries, to share experience and knowledge of the groundbreaking work being carried out in local Scottish communities to prevent suicide.

This two-day event will be an opportunity for best practice and new developments to be shared and promoted, progress to date to be consolidated, and to enthuse and inspire individuals to face the many challenges ahead.

Worldwide there is one suicide every 40 seconds.  In Scotland, 763 lost their lives to suicide in 2005  – around two every day.  That’s why the Scottish Executive launched the ‘Choose Life’ suicide prevention strategy and action plan in 2002.  Since the last quarter of the 20th century, suicide rates in Scotland have been higher than elsewhere in the UK, however more recently rates have started to fall although it is too early to tell if we are starting to see a significant downward trend.

Deputy Health Minister, Lewis Macdonald said: “It is more than four years since we launched Choose Life and I’m pleased that much progress has been made since then.  Every council in Scotland now has a local suicide prevention action plan in place, with local Choose Life Co-ordinators organising activities to raise awareness and take forward preventative work.  We also now have nearly 8000 people across Scotland trained in suicide prevention skills.

“Our recent mental health delivery plan – Delivering for Mental Health – reinforced our aim to meet our target of a 20% reduction in suicides by 2013.  We have made a commitment to train 50% of key frontline medical staff in suicide prevention by 2010.  We will also continue to raise more awareness of this problem, specifically focusing more action on groups at heightened risk of suicide such as those with mental ill-health, people living in deprived areas, prisoners and those with drug and alcohol addictions.”

Four years on since the launch, Choose Life has now entered into its second phase.  Findings from an independent evaluation of phase one were published last year, providing clear recommendations for the future direction of the strategy.  Two of these were to develop closer links with both clinical services and substance misuse agencies.  Delegates will hear from Tom Brown, Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Mike McCarron, National Co-ordinator of the Scottish Association of Alcohol and Drug Action Teams about how this can be best achieved.

Caroline Farquhar, Head of Implementation for Choose Life said: “Choose Life calls for a partnership approach,  where local communities, health services, the voluntary sector, education, families and carers are encouraged and supported in making suicide prevention their business.

“We are expecting a diverse range of partners at this conference – social workers, the Police,  psychologists, psychiatrists, policy colleagues within the Executive, drug workers, and Criminal Justice Managers to name a few,  therefore this event is likely to be another important milestone in taking the next steps towards our target of reducing suicide across Scotland.”

Last year, Choose Life recruited the support of Charlie Nicholas and Scott Booth, football pundits for Sky Sports and Setanta.  Well known for their ability to talk in a professional capacity, the duo helped Choose Life during National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Week to encourage men to talk about their emotions, rather than bottle things up.  Suicide is the biggest killer of young men aged between 18 and 25 and three out of four suicides in Scotland are by men.