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Suicide prevention now a ‘high priority’ for Scotland

Government efforts to tackle Scotland’s rising suicide rates have come under fire from one of the country’s leading experts on the problem.

Suicides among Scottish men have risen by 75 per cent since the 1970s and are particularly high among 25 to 35-year-old males. Three times as many young Scottish men kill themselves as young women, according to latest figures from the Scottish Executive. Overall, suicide rates in Scotland are twice those in England and Wales.

The Scottish Executive recently pledged £1.5m to set up a telephone helpline for young suicidal men as part of a draft framework aimed at preventing suicide, which also recommends working with young people to tackle the stigma around mental health, ensuring care settings reduce potential for suicides and working with local bodies to identify problems which may trigger suicide.

But Dr Betty Maxwell-Carter, chief executive of the charity Facilitate Scotland, which runs an innovative suicide prevention centre in Glasgow, argued that helplines can be counterproductive. She cited research showing that nearly half of people at high risk of suicide who call helplines commit suicide within 24 hours.

Dr Maxwell-Carter also criticised the framework document for assuming that suicide rates were linked to poverty. Her centre’s analysis of every suicide in Scotland in the past five years revealed that men in social class three in better-off areas were the main risk group.

‘I think the framework is in disarray,’ she said. ‘They have taken the central premise that suicide is poverty-driven and it is wrong.’

Although nobody knows why suicides are so high among Scottish men, she suggested a culture of ‘big boys don’t cry’ was partly to blame.

Maddy Halliday, director of the Mental Health Foundation in Scotland, defended the Scottish Executive’s approach and said tackling suicide was a high political priority. She believed poverty was a clear underlying factor in many suicides but that wider mental health promotion, breaking down the taboo around mental illness and – particularly – helping boys express emotions, was the way forward.