Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to introduce mandatory suicide prevention training for all frontline NHS staff.

There are no current plans to introduce mandatory training for NHS frontline staff on suicide prevention.

On 4 April 2025, NHS England published Staying Safe from Suicide: Best Practice Guidance for Safety Assessment, Formulation and Management. This requires all mental health practitioners to align their practice to latest evidence in suicide prevention. The guidance is available at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/staying-safe-from-suicide/.

Pre-registration (qualifying) training for registered mental health staff is expected to contain appropriate suicide prevention training.

Training for NHS staff is being developed based on the Staying Safe from Suicide Guidance in the form of an eLearning session. This will commence in September 2025 and will be available to all mental health practitioners across all sectors including the NHS, voluntary, community, social enterprises and the independent sector.