Suicide Prevention

David Simpson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

It is good to follow the excellent speech by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). A number of points have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members about the whole issue of suicide. The overall figures are a startling reminder of just how serious that subject is in society today. In the whole of the United Kingdom—England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—6,045 people died from suicide in 2011. In Northern Ireland, the level of suicide has increased, with about 4,000 people having committed suicide between 2000 and the end of 2012. It is estimated that the final figure for 2012 will show that close to 300 people died last year in Northern Ireland through suicide. In the first nine months, the figure was 223 and it is estimated that it will reach 300 when the final analysis has been done. Those are startling figures.

The awful impact of suicide on families has been mentioned numerous times, and we cannot mention it enough. It is horrific when we, as elected Members, have to go to homes and give our sympathy to those who have lost loved ones—a child or an older person—through suicide. We mean well as we go to pay our respects, but we can walk out of the house again and go back to spend time with our families whereas those people must live with the impact day in, day out. People ask questions, as we heard earlier, such as, “Why did it happen? Why did we not see something that would have shown us that there were problems or that there was an issue that we could have dealt with?” Those questions linger for years; they never leave those people, who think that there must surely have been something they could have done to prevent the suicide. Nothing in life is too serious for us not to sit down and talk about it and not to try to resolve it. The individual who died through suicide might have found that the issues were not as big as they originally thought if they had only sat down and talked to someone about them.

In my constituency of Upper Bann, we have had our share of deaths of younger and older people through suicide. From memory, I would say that the youngest person to die through suicide in my constituency was 12 years of age. That was a very difficult home to go to and we must ask what would make a 12-year-old do that. There must have been something traumatic in that child’s life to make them do what they did, and the mark left on the family has been horrific.

Many organisations across the United Kingdom deal with the issue and offer a lot of counselling. We have a number of them in my constituency. One that I deal with a lot is Yellow Ribbon, run by Dr Arthur Cassidy and a group of fantastic volunteers. I spoke to him earlier this week and over the past two years the organisation has counselled almost 400 people in my area. Its office is in the town of Portadown and many of those who have gone through its doors were referred by their GPs. The organisation has done a lot of work with young people and older people; it has a great passion for the people in the area and it has tried to help to the best of its ability.

As I said, Dr Cassidy is helped by a group of volunteers, and finance is very hard for them. The organisation is run mostly on donations from families, churches and other such organisations. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) mentioned that some £30 million has been given to organisations that deal with the issues surrounding suicide, and although a large amount of money has been poured in, the situation is worsening in Northern Ireland. That is very, very worrying. Reference has been made to the legacy of the troubles and the difficulties in the Province. Another generation is emerging that is living with what has happened in the past. Perhaps their parents died in the same way, and it is a copycat: people are trying to copy what has happened. That is an awful blight on society.

Dr Cassidy’s organisation counsels many people, and he does not believe that counselling is working as it ought to work. Perhaps we have to think outside the box and come up with more innovative ways of trying to help people and identify the issues that they face. When he talks to those people, he finds that they have very low self-esteem. Men who have worked for 25 or 30 years in one job are paid off and feel that they are not worth anything. They feel that the family would be better off without them, then tragedy strikes. That is the way it happens. When it does, they believe that it will solve an issue for them, but unfortunately it leaves a major problem for the families who are left to pick up the pieces.

The economic crisis that we are going through is a difficult time. Only at the weekend, I spoke to families who are finding it so hard to make ends meet that in the week at the end of the month when they have to pay their mortgage—if they do not, they could go into arrears and lose their home—they do not buy groceries or food to feed the family. In society as a whole, life has become more difficult. Those of us who are in jobs and enjoy the benefits of work may not see it as much, but people who are out of work and who have lost benefits and so on are going through a difficult time.

We need more innovative thinking, and we need to see whether we can help young people and get them into work projects and youth clubs, and help them to meet other young people. We have a lot of work ahead of us to do.