Agenda item

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health and the Interim Director of Public Health, note the content of the Strategy and endorse the consultation process and questions which are set out in the report.

Ms J Mookherjee, Consultant in Public Health, was in attendance for this and the following item.

1.            Ms Mookherjee introduced the report and explained that the committee was being asked to give views on the draft strategy and agree the process for, and content of, broader consultation.  The Kent strategy was built around the same six key priorities as the national suicide prevention strategy but had its own, local, action plan. Recent research had identified that rates of suicide were higher in the construction, agriculture and highways maintenance industries. Ms Mookherjee responded to comments and questions from Members, as follows:-

a)    data on the rate of suicide among young offenders had only recently been recorded; in 2013, 11 suicides were recorded in Kent among young people in custody. Work was ongoing with NHS partners to address this issue, using the mental health concordat and crisis intervention procedures. In addition, the police would need to have training in identifying mental health problems among young people upon arrest.  This would be a challenge as mental health problems could seem to be anti-social behaviour;

b)    the increase in the rate of suicide was made up of the number of suicides and the increased rate of suicide among construction workers. Debt and economic uncertainty were also contributors, and those dealing with these anxieties needed advice and support. Ms Mookherjee undertook to check the involvement of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau on a steering group which was looking at suicide prevention and advise the committee of the outcome outside the meeting.  Another speaker added that the Citizen’s Advice Bureau had a duty of confidentiality, which might make it difficult to identify and use client data to monitor patterns;

c)      it was difficult to identify war veterans among victims of suicide as a Coroner recording a verdict would not necessarily have access to, record and report information about a victim’s past life. Accordingly, there was no data on the rate of suicide among former service personnel, although they were identified as a high-risk group in the wellbeing strategy. It was suggested that, as the Coroners service was run by the County Council, the Council could request that additional information be recorded which would help other areas of its work, and Ms Mookherjee undertook to look into this suggestion;

d)    students were known to be at particular risk of self-harming but not of suicide.  Although incidences of self-harming were viewed very seriously, they were not necessarily a pre-cursor to suicide and were seen as an expression of distress rather than an intention to take one’s own life;

e)    it was known that men with Asperger’s syndrome or on the autistic spectrum tended towards depression but were less likely than other men to join support groups or projects such as the ‘men’s shed’ scheme, which were designed to give men a way of seeking moral support and networking to combat mental health problems.  Such young men would be hard to identify and reach;

f)     the Live it Well strategy could also be more widely promoted to support the same aim; and

g)     Ms Mookherjee advised Members that national and local good practice involved identifying popular venues chosen for suicide by jumping, eg Dover Cliffs, Beachy Head and the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, and ensuring that contact details for the Samaritans were displayed prominently at those sites.  Asked if people who travelled to such locations to commit suicide would then be counted as a suicide from that area, thus inflating local figures, Ms Mookherjee undertook to look into how such deaths would be recorded, geographically, and advice the speaker outside the meeting.     

2.            RESOLVED that:-

a)    the contents of the draft Strategy and Action Plan be noted; and

b)    the proposed consultation process for the 2015-2020 Kent and Medway Suicide Prevention Strategy and Action Plan, and the questions to be used in this consultation, be endorsed.