Suicide Prevention

Suicide Prevention Strategy

Preventing suicides

Preventing suicidal behaviour in the first-place is our goal. Building individual and community resilience is the sustainable approach to changing suicidal behaviour and improved mental health.

We know that men and those from more deprived neighbourhoods are less likely to seek help, that stigma can stop people voicing their concerns and yet conversely following a suicide attempt many people turn to family, friends and neighbours for support.

Key actions towards preventing suicides locally are:

• Creating Suicide Safer Communities
• Lived Experience Networks
• Awareness campaigns- Stay Alive App, Kind to your mind, Let’s keep talking
• Media work with the Samaritans
• Suicide prevention training for all
• Middle-aged men community programmes
• Preventing deaths in public places
• Preventing deaths in those bereaved by suicide

Other key areas of work

Suicide Safer Care Services

Poor mental and physical health are key risk factors for suicidal behaviour. Whilst there has been much progress in mental health and primary care to identify patients at risk and ensure their safety, more can be done. The National Confidential Inquiry (2016) reported on evidence that helps in identifying what works in lowering the suicide rate both in mental health services and across healthcare generally.

Key actions towards preventing suicides in services locally are:

• Mental health patient’s safety
• Self-harm prevention
• Working links with C&M MH Crisis Care Concordat actions
• Working links with Places of Safety provision across C&M

Support After Suicide

Those bereaved by suicide have three times the risk of dying from suicide themselves.  Alleviating the distress of those bereaved or affected by suicide reduces this risk and the risk for communities of suicide clusters or contagion and promotes healthy recovery of the affected community.

Key actions towards preventing suicides in those bereaved and affected are:

• Suicide liaison service provision
• Peer support, such as the Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS)
• Bereavement counselling
• Community Response Planning

Intelligence and Research

Multi-agency intelligence sharing, learning and research provides us with a better understanding of the needs of different populations at risk of suicide. Intelligence and research driven interventions and services to prevent suicides support the optimum means of us reaching the zero suicide goal.

Key actions to improve our access to reliable and current data are:

• Suicide Audits
• Real Time Surveillance
• Performance monitoring

Liverpool John Moores University Suicide & Self-harm Research Group (SSHRG)

The SSHRG looks at conducting psychological research into suicide and self-harm. It is comprised of a group of academics, research staff and postgraduate students whose research covers a wide variety of suicide and self-harm research about individuals, communities and populations.