Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy in helping to prevent men aged between 45 and 49 years old from taking their own lives.

The National Suicide Prevention Strategy highlights men, and especially middle-aged and young men, as a group at high risk of suicide. In September 2018, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the final suicide registrations data for 2018, which showed a significant increase amongst men, following four consecutive years of decreases. These latest figures reinforce why suicide prevention continues to be a priority for this Government.

Experts are clear that we need more data to be able to draw firm conclusions, and we have set up a working group with the ONS, Professor Louis Appleby and other academics to consider the data in more detail.