Suicide :: Suicide rate at an all time low in UK

A progress report published by the National Institute for Mental Health in England shows that good progress is being made towards meeting the Government target to reduce suicide by 20 per cent by 2010, but more can be done to bring down the suicide rate further.

The report sets out the achievements of the last 12 months and shows:

the lowest overall rate of suicide amongst the general population on record;

a fall in suicide rates amongst young men – continuing the downward trend since the problem of suicides in this group first escalated some 30 years ago;

a fall in the rate of self-inflicted deaths in prisons to 70 in 2005/6, a 17 per cent reduction compared with last year; and

a fall in the number of suicides amongst mental health in-patients from 217 in 1997 to 154 in 2004.

The report also says that more needs to be done to reduce the number of people in contact with mental health services who take their own lives. The Avoidable Deaths report published last year estimated that 56 mental health patients discharged from hospital die every year following non-compliance with medication or loss of contact with services. Supervised Community Treatment (SCT), a measure to improve clinical risk management that the Government is introducing in its Mental Health Bill, has the potential to help prevent those deaths.

Having a severe mental illness is a known risk factor of suicide and a significant number of suicides occur during in-patient care or shortly after discharge. Avoidable Deaths showed around 200 suicides a year – or 14 per cent of all suicides – follow non-compliance with treatment. Better compliance with treatment and closer supervision were highlighted by clinicians as the main ways of reducing suicide risk.


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