Why are Suicidal Behaviours and Tendencies Overwhelmingly Ignored?

Stephanie Prior

Social media can often glamorise the idea of suicide, misleading young impressionable minds to romanticise suicide and encourage suicidal thoughts in teenagers or even in children as young as four or five.

The idea of suicide has become a normalised topic in households and become a term that people often refer to when expressing an overwhelmingly negative emotion. This can lead to young children hearing the term and could result in them having suicidal thoughts. It has become a frightening concern for parents with teenagers as suicide has become the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 10-24. Young men are also up to four times more likely to commit suicide then young women.

It is often questioned why men statistically commit suicide more than women, and the answer to this is that men aren’t more likely to attempt suicide, they are more likely to use more violent methods of suicide, resulting in death more than female suicide attempts.

Accessing NHS Mental Health Services

The availability of help regarding mental health concerns from the NHS is very low with one general practitioner reporting that:

“Mental health services in this country are as poor as I have ever known them since I started to study psychiatry in 1988. We would not accept this in any other area of medicine.”

These quotes are truly troubling and reveal the perspectives of medical and mental health professionals on the topic of mental health, especially since the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released a document regarding the number of suicides in 2023. It was reported that 6069 suicides were registered in England and Wales and the percentage of male suicides per 100,000 deaths increased from 16.4% in 2022 to 17.4% in 2023.

The occurrence of societal events such as the coronavirus global pandemic, cost of living crisis and political instability have impacted the mental health of wider society because of the repeated stress and pressure these events have left behind. Most significantly, the nationwide lockdowns in 2020. The pandemic resulted in people who live alone having reduced access to their support systems or to a mental health professional that they may have needed, and it was since reported that suicides that occurred during the 2020 pandemic were not fully registered due to the delays from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mental Health Negligence

Josie Robinson, a medical negligence lawyer at Osbornes Law is currently acting for a family who sadly lost a young father of two children because of suicide. Her colleague, Nicholas Leahy, is also currently acting for a family who lost their son because of suicide.

Both cases highlight the current issue with accessing mental health services which arguably may have prevented these deaths. Osbornes Law have acted for many families over the years who have been affected by suicide and the impact such an event has on a family cannot be underestimated.

Help From The Samaritans

With September 10th being World Suicide Prevention Day, it is important to ensure that loved ones feel heard, and have conversations with those around you to make sure that if anyone you know needs support from someone, you can be the one to give it to them. For support when dealing with topics of suicide or self-harm in any form, contact the Samaritans, you can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch and don’t feel ashamed or afraid to reach out for support.

If your family has been affected by suicide due to not being able to access essential mental health services, you can contact Osbornes Law to find out if we can help.

To speak with one of our solicitors, contact us by:

• Filling in our online enquiry form; or
• Calling us on 020 7485 8811