Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to improve suicide prevention policies in response to the statistics on suicides in the UK, 2013 Registrations, published by the Office for National Statistics on 19 January 2016.

Alistair Burt

The Government has invested over £1.5 million on suicide and self-harm prevention research since the National Suicide Prevention Strategy to inform and target our strategy for reducing suicide rates.

In January last year, we asked local areas to aspire to an ambition of zero suicides, to raise awareness around mental health and suicide prevention in particular.

We are in the early stages of discussions about re-invigorating the National Strategy to drive local delivery. We are developing those plans for this, and will make an announcement shortly.

The highest cause of death in young men and women in England is death through suicide, and rapid skilled response through a well-publicised access route is essential to reduce mortality. The NHS111 Mental Health Programme has been set up specifically to improve services and NHS England is working with Mind and the Telephone Helplines Partnership to develop a training course designed by people with lived experience specifically to support 111 call handlers deliver the best possible response in times of crisis.