Suicide Prevention and the National Curriculum

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for bringing this petition to us.

My constituent Mike Palmer’s daughter, Beth, died by suicide on 28 March 2020, in the first week of lockdown. She was just 17. She was a talented singer, with a vivacious personality. She was deeply loved by friends and family—a great character who belonged on stage. Indeed, Beth was the last person anyone would have thought would take her own life. She had so much to live for. Sadly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), the chair of the APPG, said, this is far too common: suicide is the biggest killer of under-35s in the UK, with around 200 school children each year taking their own lives.

Mike felt Beth’s loss so acutely that he was plunged into a suicidal spiral himself. A complex grief is left behind for families. The facts show that around 135 people are affected by one suicide and that those closest to the individual lost are 80% to 300% times more likely to take their own lives. However, through that despair, fate was to play a part. Mike was to team up with Tim and Andy, the fathers of two other beautiful young women, Emily and Sophie, who were also sadly lost to suicide, and so 3 Dads Walking was born.

For these men, a simple walk between their homes, raising funds and awareness for the charity Papyrus, which is dedicated to the prevention of young suicide, has turned into a life mission to prevent other families from going through the same lifelong agony that they face. Walking in 2021 and 2022, they covered over 900 miles and were on the road for 46 days. During the walks, Mike, Andy and Tim were joined continuously by other bereaved parents and those affected by suicide. Through conversations with those individuals, the same messages kept coming through: if our children had only known how to reach out, and had had an awareness of how to keep themselves safe, they might be here now. 3 Dads Walking believes that, if our young people’s greatest danger is themselves, we as a society should tell them and teach them, in an age-appropriate and sensitive way, how to keep themselves and others safe.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I put on record that many of my constituents in Weaver Vale have been inspired by 3 Dads Walking, and the clarion call to ensure that suicide prevention is integrated into the curriculum and that there is greater regulation. The call for greater regulation of online harm has come from my constituents who have been affected by suicide in their family.

[Mike Kane]

I thank my colleague for his intervention. I am sure that the Education Minister will have heard that fully. I know the Minister to be an extraordinarily honourable man who takes the education of our children seriously, as I previously shadowed him in the post for a number of years.

We should talk about mental health in schools more, building the awareness and coping mechanisms that will foster more positive mental wellbeing and resilience in young people and helping to lay the foundations that will keep young people safe and reverse the tragically high rates of young suicide. Mike tells me that some of the most powerful stories that the 3 Dads hear on their walks are from those who have experienced severe mental health episodes, and in some cases have attempted suicide, but who have overcome those struggles and are now living happily, with full lives. Those stories show that hope is always possible and that people, especially with support, can make different choices and overcome the worst mental health struggles. Is an alternative outcome for families affected by suicide not worth fighting for? Surely the testimonies starkly demonstrate what is at stake if we do not act and what we can offer if we do. By providing life-saving knowledge to our young people, we can give them and their families an alternative path—a path to hope, a path to a happy and full life for them and their loved ones. That is a path that everyone deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on introducing the debate, but I pay particular tribute to Andy Airey, Mike Palmer and Tim Owen, whom we know collectively as 3 Dads Walking. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) summed it up brilliantly: there could be no greater tribute to your beautiful girls than the work you are doing in raising awareness, in fundraising and in getting this petition. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that the Minister will probably not attend a more important debate in his career. We have already heard personal stories of people who have been affected by suicide, and I think we will be hearing more as the debate proceeds.

I fully support the proposals set out in the petition to make suicide prevention a compulsory part of the school curriculum. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central also made such an important point about converting walking to talking. I think we should bottle that phrase; it sums up where we need to go.

We know that 90% of suicides are associated with mental health issues but that 75% of people who take their own life had no prior contact with mental health services, so the earlier that children and young people are aware of and understand their feelings, but also where to access mental health services when they need them, the better. I would like to raise a few more points specifically in relation to deaths by suicide. In 2021, 5,583 people died by suicide.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, particularly in the light of her excellent health service background, long before she came to this House. I hope that I have now stood on my feet long enough to bring her back into the debate.

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend is very kind, and I thank him.

Unfortunately, our much-loved 20-year-old nephew, Jack, died when he took his life. Jack was a lot younger than his 11 cousins and was doted on by all. At our regular Sunday morning breakfasts, he would be in the centre of the room, laughing at someone’s joke or telling everybody about the week that he had had at school. He was gentle, bright and kind. We are a very large family—my husband, John, is the eldest of seven and we all have our children; of course, Jack’s mum is John’s baby sister—but we are a very close one, and 19 months on from Jack’s death and a month after his inquest, to say we are all still devastated would be no exaggeration. This is absolutely nothing compared with the heartbreak his mum is going through. She has given me her permission to speak about the context of Jack’s suicide, in the hope that that may help others.

At 17 and without his mum’s knowledge, Jack was prescribed Roaccutane. Roaccutane is the trade name for isotretinoin, a medicine prescribed for severe acne, and has been available in the UK since 1983. It was also approved for use in the USA, under the trade name Accutane, in 1982. However, in July 2009, following the filing of thousands of lawsuits in which Accutane use was said to be associated with severe, life-changing health problems, both physical and psychological—in some cases many years after Accutane use—it was withdrawn from sale in the US.

In November 2020, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency announced that the Commission on Human Medicines had established an isotretinoin expert working group. This evidence review was prompted when the highest levels of fatalities associated with Roaccutane use was recorded in 2019 by the MHRA’s yellow card reporting scheme—an online portal for reporting adverse drug reactions. In total, 12 fatalities were reported in 2019—10 by suicide—and there were 85 serious incidents and 19 non-serious ones.

At Jack’s inquest last month, the coroner requested that the MHRA present evidence about the review’s findings. The scandal is that the review had been completed at the end of 2021, but the findings and recommendations had not been published because of “complications associated with Brexit”. It transpired that the recommendations, which 15 months on still have not been published, included requiring two doctors to agree to Roaccutane being prescribed to under-18s and prescribing it only after all other acne treatments had been tried. It is a serious drug, and it needs to be closely monitored.

The MHRA representative attending the inquest revealed that, since the completion of the review in 2021, there had been a further 81 adverse psychiatric events, including one suicide and one attempted suicide. On this issue, the family were pleased that the coroner had issued a prevention of future deaths report to the Health and Social Care Secretary, and the family looks forward to his early response and the publication of the 2021 review on isotretinoin. However, we believe that there needs to be an immediate awareness of the dangers of this group of drugs so that more of our young people and their families do not go through what we have been through.

The family also want to raise issues about the suicides of university students. Every year, three students per 100,000 will take their own life. Despite Universities UK’s “Suicide-safer universities” guidelines, there seems to be an ad hoc approach to how they are implemented. Prior to his death, Jack had been a first-year student at the University of York. In March 2020, he expressed concerns about his mental health to his departmental support officer, but although Jack was signposted to mental health support, this was not followed through. What Jack displayed was more or less word for word what was in the Universities UK’s guidelines on recognising signs and vulnerabilities, but it was not responded to as such, and it certainly was not flagged centrally.

We believe that, at registration, universities should get students to identify an individual—a parent, guardian or named advocate—for university staff to get in touch with if they have health concerns about a student. We also believe that there needs to be training for all university staff regarding suicide prevention. At this stage, I also pay tribute to Papyrus for its work on awareness training, particularly its campaign #SpotTheSigns, and similarly to the Samaritans for its training. That needs to be widespread not just in schools but in higher education institutions, so there is an understanding of the signs and symptoms.

We will never know exactly why our Jack took his life. We miss him every day, and want to do all that we can to prevent others from feeling that suicide is the only way out of the pain that they feel, because it is not.