Suicide rates in England and Wales reach highest level since 1999

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/29/suicide-rates-in-england-and-wales-reach-highest-level-since-1999

by corbynista2029

17 comments

  1. How many of these will be a direct result of both the Tories and Labour making life more difficult for trans kids?

    10?

    50?

    100?

    Can Wes Streeting put a number on how many young person suicides it would take before he will change his mind?

  2. >45 to 64 years

    My guess is that long-term austerity is a major factor

  3. Hardly surprising due to continuing economic policies that leave people feeling hopeless.

  4. Worth noting that there are still open questions about suicide statistics in the UK, ONS, by their own admission, have no idea what the impact of the change in coronial burden of proof in 2018 has had and it’s not really monitored how many findings are due to the coronial courts catching up with deaths in previous years being recorded late due to the pandemic backlog.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/changeinthestandardofproofusedbycoronersandtheimpactonsuicidedeathregistrationsdatainenglandandwales/2020-12-08/pdf#page8

    Consensus seems to be there is an increase but nobody is really sure how big it is.

  5. I get tired of the messaging around mental health ‘just talk’.

    This doesn’t solve the underlying issue of everything going to shit.

    Talking doesn’t pay your rent, or save up a house deposit. Talking doesn’t stop debt or having to work
    until you’re in your 70s.

    Not saying talking doesn’t help some people but in most instances it just seems like a plaster on a bullet wound.

    Also I think a lot of mental health completely ignores that for a significant amount of men life is staggeringly hard.

  6. I think that one of the factors here is the lack of knowledge, understanding and respect for Catholic doctrine. It is, in fact, the greatest sin, yet people so willing to commit it. If there was a large return to traditional Catholicism in the UK, I am sure these rates would decline. 

  7. I see a lot of this coming down to a lack of social support networks. Family. Friends most importantly. Isolation. That feeds into a general sense of depression and hopelessness, and it takes grassroots movements to reverse this.

    It is very hard to reach out to find and connect with new people and form friendships.

    I am currently the Executive Chair of a network of mental-health peer-support groups. Whilst we focus on mental health, one of the primary foci of the network is to reduce social isolation among all people.

    The network does this by finding, renting and providing spaces for people to meet and engage socially. In order to overcome issues around social anxiety, topics of discussion, feeling that there may be nothing in common (which are all drivers to reducing social contact) we also provide tabletop games.

    These games, which do not focus on the more time-heavy miniature or wargames but include them, are provided free as part of the groups activities, There is no need to purchase games or bring your own gaming materials (though those able are free to do so if they wish) just turn up and play games! Everyone there will be there for the same shared goals of enjoying a game (or three) and the social aspect that playing these games brings about.

    Currently our closest groups are in Lincolnshire and we are looking to expand, grow, and bring more people together through the shared experiences, the hobby and enjoyment of playing games together.

    If people are interested, and this resonates with anyone, we are open to any and all people who are interested. To expand with the East Midlands or further all we need to do it find enough people willing to attend, find a venue and start putting the group together.

    Due to capacity, we would look for the group to put together volunteer leads, answering to the main Networks Executive which would provide the paperwork for the running of the group. The size of the group is only dictated by the spaces available to hire and the needs of the people attending.

    The Network would be responsible for the payment of hall rents, insurances and everything else, the volunteers for the new group would just need to keep records of members (free membership and just attend a couple of times) and any fees collected. Fees as they stand would only be to cover the cost of the rented spaces. To illustrate, our network runs groups where halls are rented and we charge around £3 per attendance to cover that cost. We also provide drinks/snacks with a small markup to cover other costs.

    If anyone is interested in working with us, either as a member or voluntary committee member, reach out to this reddit account or visit [allaccessgames.co.uk](http://allaccessgames.co.uk)

    Thank you for reading and I hope everyone has a great day!

  9. Friends out of work due to mental health he got more in benefits working than he did not working?!

  10. I’m 44. I’ve tried to kill myself three times, most recently two years ago. I have been through CBT and been on SSRIs, but all they do is try to make you more accustomed to living in the shit world, rather than actually fixing things so that it didn’t seem so fucking hopeless.

    Most of my friends are married with kids. I’ve been single for a decade, with the exception of a fling I had with a 20 something who was far too young for me a year or so ago, which obviously didn’t last. Every day I wake up, go to work, come home and sit on my own until I go to bed.

    I have hobbies, I keep myself entertained as best I can, and I do occasionally see friends, but for the most part it’s a solitary existence. I’ve given up on ever finding a partner. I have nothing to look forward to.

    I have a job that pays a decent wage, I’m intelligent and I’m supposedly not bad looking. There are people worse off than me, for sure. I’m not jealous of people who are doing better than me. I just hate the lonely nothingness my life has become.

    I think about killing myself at least once a day. I don’t talk to anyone because it’s not going to fix anything.

  11. Yet No company or Government support doesn’t ask the Why do they?

    Extortionate prices of things, employers taking advantage of employees by pushing and squeezing every single drop of energy from their staff that when their health goes wrong, no employer gives a rats arse…….

    Even without a job and on benefits the DWP are far from perfect and totally lack of understanding someone who’s health issues are detrimental to a working environment so much that having to take DWP to court for PIP decisions that make you feel that jumping off a bridge would be much simpler.

    They are the True issues but no one will challenge it head on……

  12. The official suicide rates are kind of meaningless since coroners try to avoid ruling deaths as a suicide at all costs. If anything, this change could be down to a recent change in the law. It used to be that in order to determine a death was a suicide, coroners basically had to present the same level of evidence required to convict someone of murder. Now the standard is just “on the balance of probability,” but even then loads of suicides go officially unrecorded. Suicide was a crime up until 1961 and a lot of people still consider it a mortal sin. It’s just easier/”kinder” for coroners to give a ruling of death by accident or misadventure.

    Take Molly Russell’s death, for example. She wrote on social media that she’d been having suicidal thoughts for weeks. She left a suicide note. [Still wasn’t ruled a suicide](https://news.sky.com/story/molly-russell-inquest-teenager-died-by-self-harm-while-suffering-negative-effects-of-online-content-coroner-finds-12707322):

    > The schoolgirl Molly Russell died from “an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”, an inquest has concluded.

    > Andrew Walker, the coroner, said he did not “think it would be safe” to give suicide as her cause of death, instead opting for self-harm.

    > Giving his findings on Friday, he said: “Molly was at a transition period in her young life which made certain elements of communication difficult.”

    I read about another case where a woman left a suicide note before hanging herself, but it wasn’t ruled a suicide because the coroner argued she was in an “unsettled” state of mind at the time of her death.

    The whole system is a farce. The problem is that coroners have been lying for so long that if they actually did start being honest instead of returning “well it’s possible that he just tripped over and accidentally got his head stuck in a noose” conclusions, the official suicide rates would skyrocket.

  13. “Based on these figures, over 900 people will have died by suicide in the 55 days since the new government took power but while we immediately heard about plans for more wind turbines, it is suicide prevention that has been left blowing in the wind. The government needs to get its priorities straight because lives depend on it.”

    That’s a really shitty thing to say in my opinion. You can tackle more than one problem at once. A Government has to deal with energy, housing, crime, prisons, pensions, social problems. To say that wind turbine building means that we are choosing that over mental health problems is a weird precedent to set. I fully recognise that mental health problems in this nation are a growing concern, but so is dependency of fossil fuels. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I don’t know if that’s an unpopular take but I just don’t think you solve problems such as this by comparing it to something as disparate as energy production.

  14. Suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 45 and has been a huge problem for a long time. I don’t see anything actually being done about it. I’ve tried to kill myself three times and still think about it every day. I tried to bring it up with my doctor and just got brushed aside, along side the issue I have which causes me chronic pain

  15. kier will fix it by introducing a new crime making suicide illegal.

  16. My beautiful friend will be part of this statistic. Hear that lovey? You’re part of a statistic and I can just about hear her say “They were all copying me, obviously. Muppets”

    2023 was a brutal year for some. The world was fully reopened after the pandemic and rather than joy and good times they found themselves lost and unable to shake off the darkness they felt in isolation

    So here’s to my friend and the rest of the poor souls. I’m so very sorry and I miss you lovey

  17. I’m 32 and of all the men I’ve known who are now dead, most have been by suicide. Some appearing to have relatively good lives and income, some not. It’s heartbreaking and I have no idea what the underlying cause solution would be.

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