Are you ok?
It's not rocket science according to the Welsh Assembly Government's Director of Mental Health Development. Preventing suicide can simply be about asking 'are you ok?' and listening to the answer. It can, said Phill Chick, be about a whole lot more but at least you shouldn't be afraid to ask.
The suicide rate in Wales is less than that of Northern Ireland or Scotland but higher than England and higher than the UK average. This morning you'll perhaps have been listening as the Welsh Assembly Government spelled out their national strategy to reduce suicide and self-harm - the one they've come under the cosh for not having, the one they've now been persuaded by experience in Scotland in particular of having a national strategy, will "add value" to the various programmes and initiatives already in place.
The one that means they might now hit the target they set in 2002 to reduce suicide in Wales by 10 per cent by 2012? Their progress so far, it was admitted this morning, was "mixed". Having a coherent national strategy will, it's hoped, "help with that".
The national strategy that is now in place because of the cluster of suicides in the Bridgend area over the past year?
No matter how hard you've been listening to that answer, it's been tough to get a straight one.
There's been a willingness to say that the strategy launched today was informed by what happened in he Bridgend area and that it was even prompted by what happened there. This morning, the Chief Medical Officer for Wales, Dr Tony Jewell, gave us the answer we needed to report this fairly and properly. In his view this national strategy wouldn't have been launched today if it weren't for the fact that some 23 young people from the Bridgend area have apparently taken their own lives since the beginning of 2007.
Small comfort maybe for all of those so deeply affected by a single death, let alone that number of deaths. Small comfort but perhaps some comfort. And maybe that isn't rocket science either.
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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It's not before time that a national strategy will be put in place, however I don't think it's that easy.
As an ex-psychiatric nurse I am well aware that there are people who are able to cover up suicidal feelings, and do it very well.
I actually designed a risk assessment for suicide/self harm back in the early 1990's, but unless you know someone well it's not easy to see the signs.
Having said all that I hope that the new strategy does what it is intended to do.
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I have not read the strategy so I'm afraid that I cannot comment on any specifics.
However, I feel that - in concept - a national strategy is a positive and logical step.
Like other difficult to deal with issues, like people suffering from child or domestic abuse, assistance to those considering suicide can be made much more effective through coherent information links between bodies like the NHS, the social services and schools. This sort of information sharing needs to be considered on a national level.
On a different tack, however much we strategise we shouldn't under-estimate the importance, and the power, of the individual in these situations. As Bethan writes: asking 'Are you ok?' is a simple thing that we can all do to play our part in a responsible, caring society.
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"Small comfort but perhaps some comfort. And maybe that isn't rocket science either. "
AMEN Betsan.
In fairness I thought that BBC Wales reported all this (Bridgend etc.) very well and responsibly...unlike others...
Despite the recent Brand/Ross "kicking" (justified) the BBC is, at core, to be cherished . Anyone want Fox Ferndale...CNN Cymru?
Aggh.. I've gone all soffffft!
Welcome back.
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As an ex Police Officer who worked in Police Custody suites where personal Risk Assessments on individual detained persons were the core methods of preventing self harm, but there are still several hundred actual suicides and attempts at self harm that occur annually in England and Wales because the signs are so difficult to detect. Perhaps we need a strategy to ensure the Health Service take their responsibility seriously and start caring for those individuals who because mental health services are so appalingly poor end up in police cells where they languish for days on end until a conscientious psychiatrist is persuaded that its treatment the individual needs not incarceration.
WAG are very good at publishing strategies let's see how good they are at publishing quantifiable outcomes arising out of such strategies.
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Total uncaring hypocrisy by both the UK government and the Assembly.
In 2009 (not far away is it) those with psychiatric problems, currently on incapacity benefit will be forced onto unemployment benefit. This will be a total farce, as there will be NO vacancies, while unemployment even among the fit, is expected to soar over the next few years.
This "screening" will be carried out by totally untrained clerical staff, working for private companies who will be paid a fee/commission/reward, call it what you will, for every mentally ill claimant they transfer onto the cheaper unemployment benefit.
This will be all the more disgusting as many of these poor sods, knowing no better, actually do their best to impress their unqualified 'judges' that they are capable of work...being blissfully unaware that their incapacity benefit to up to £84 a week, will then drop to up to £60 a week. Makes you proud doesn't it !!!
This "Employment and Support Allowance" was quietly sneaked through parliament.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the suicide rate amongst those with clinical/bi-polar/manic depression will rise substantially. A fact which seems to bother our Westminster and Assembly politicians not one jot.
The opening poster on here, "greyDalesman" is absolutely correct when he says, "There are people who are able to cover-up suicidal feelings and do it very well"
This government would it appear, prefers (on purely economic grounds) that even more of the mentally ill do the same.
The young son of a friend of ours recently committed suicide. The effect on his family has been just awful. Though not normally one to get upset to the point of tears (after all, us blokes don't carry on like that do we) I have become appalled at the way our mentally ill are treated.But more to the point how government and Assembly, through weasel words and slyly introduced bills, intend treating them in the future.
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I can't believe that I'm agreeing with Noah about James Parnell's hopeless attempts at reforming benefits...the personal capability assessments whereby entitlement to Incapacity Benefit is determined or whether you are capable of wor and can claim the much less Jobseekers Allowance of £60 per week (remember if you are over 65 you get £120 per week). But since when is it the fault of One Wales the business of benefits HAS NOT been devolved to WAG so you can't blame them for it. It makes me think sometimes that Noa should be on Incapacity Benefit...a pathological hatred of Plaid Cymru and of all things Welsh can only be described as symptomatic of compulsive obsessive behaviour!! Remember Plaid Cymru is the ONLY Welsh party that has a social conscience and fights for social justice
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Penyberth wrote .....
"Plaid Cymru is the ONLY Welsh party that has a social conscience and fights for social justice"
More accurately PC is .....
..... a dissenting minority ..... that ..... feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
Thus spake ..... Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
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Penyberth.
OK, maybe my sharing of the blame for this nasty new scheme between Westminster and Cardiff might be seen as being unfair to the Assembly...(moi, surely not). But you must admit your very last sentence
"Remember Plaid Cymru is the ONLY Welsh party that has a social conscience and fights for social justice"
hasn't exactly shown itself on this matter has it. I would have thought that the 'Caped Crusaders' of Plaid could have been heard shouting from the (admittedly flimsy) rooftops of the Senedd over this matter.
That they have not done so is maybe because of their total reliance on Labour to hang onto any power they may have in the Assembly. Possibly at long last it finally is a case of the dog wagging the tail.
Lastly Penyberth,
I see you are using the old Plaid favourite that distaste for Plaid Cymru equates in some way to a hatred of Wales.
This ridiculous and frankly offensive opinion of yours really does show the growing air of desperation which now pervades Plaid's thinking.
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Noah I agree with you over these changes, though I am mystified why you should blame the National Assembly or the Assembly Government for them.
I have worked with the long term unemployed - trying to help them gain skills and gain employment. A fair proportion of those had long term health issues, some of which were such that retraining could be of help. However the system was structured so they were sent of short courses that totally failed to address their long term needs or provide the necessary skills to enable them to get productive work. The exercise was largely one of box ticking and quota filling. The job centre staff got the people off their books for a period of time, so helping massage statistics. For the long term unemployed it got the benefits agency off their back for a bit. In reality for many it was no help at all.
I dealt with a fair number of people with long term depressive illness, who would never be suited for work other than in the most sheltered environments. Stress being something that they could not cope with. To force these people off benefits into short term jobs (that they would soon be sacked from due to time off due to depression) would have been callous in the extreme. Yet this is exactly what the UK government wants to do. I have a very close friend with a long term depressive illness, it runs through his family, together with a life limiting hereditary condition. He has worked and enjoyed it, but eventually the stress became too great and he had a breakdown, resulting in him being sectioned for the second time in his life. He is a lovely man, but simply can't cope with pressure of any kind. It is highly unlikely he will ever work yet periodically he had to jump through hoops to satisfy the bureaucracy of the benefits agency, which is in its self very stressful. His stress can lead to self harm - certainly suicide is something he has contemplated and attempted.
In short Noah for the second time we agree on a substantive issue.
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It is clearly to be hoped that any "strategy" put in place to reduce apparent suicides is succesful in stopping this waste of life. Why there has been this statistical aberration in the Bridgend area is for others to clarify,however as some body who has lived here all his life it is a wondeful place. In the last 20 years there has been virtually "full employment" and social facilities are very good. Is part of the general problem that children are constantly monitered in school with a pressure to succeed with academic sucess and all the pressures of a "celebrity" culture. With regard to Incapacity Benefit it is surely right that the taxpayer should not be paying for people who are fit and capable to live a life of idleness. Any body who has serious illhealth of any stripe needs help and support but the current system is a joke. I dont know if you saw the John Prestcott programme on "class" but his interview with the "unemployed" man who had fathered 9 children and living off taxpayers was illuminating for JP but not for people who have viewed the system in operation. The "mendicant" in question thought that window cleaning was demeaning and he needed a certain standard of living for his size of family. As good old Enoch said " Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad". My grandfather was a "shotfirer" until he retired at 65 and he told me the miners wanted a system that helped men to look after their families if they were injured or were out of work due factors outside their direct control. He would have been amazed to have seen the current system which actually allows "mendicants" to have a higher standard of living by not working through "taxes paid by working people"I can assure you that the "system" is mad and has lead to perverse policies that in the end will become totally unnafordable in a competitive economic world.
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Snoutsintrough.
I fully understand your irritation at the tales bandied about regarding those 'terrible scroungers'.
However, maybe a few OFFICIAL figures might temper your annoyance.
There are now just around 500,000 notifiable job vacancies in the U.K. a figure which for obvious reasons is falling dramatically as we speak.
There are 1,800,000 unemployed in the U.K. (again government figures) a figure which is confidently expected to reach 2 million by this Xmas... and frighteningly 3 million by next!!!!!!!!!!
There are 2.7 million people on Incapacity benefit, of which about 1 million are deemed capable of SOME work..again government figures.
Do the maths. Even if All the 500,000 vacancies were filled tonight, that would leave over 1.3 million (and rising dramatically) people unemployed.
Just where the hell are the jobs for those who are, at the whim of an untrained, clerk working on commission for a private company, forced off incapacity benefit and onto the back end of the already enormous unemployment benefit queue....WHERE ARE THE BLOODY JOBS ?
This policy, being carried out by a snivelling govenment lackey called James Purnell, and supported by the Tories (surprise surprise) has just about finished politics for me. Compared with this bunch, Maggie Thatcher was some kind of Mother Teresa !!! (well almost).
Gordon Brown has a reputation for being a bully in private,he is now extending his bullying tendency to the very weakest members of society...may he rot in hell !
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Thank you Noah. The statistics you quote are accurate,however the issue really is about the "bottom" 10-20% of society who for what ever reason have no intention of working. There is of course people in there who are genuinely sick and ned our full support without any qualification. If we look at America which is capitalism writ large and there 20 years before us they have recognized the problem with the awful categorization of people called the "underclass". If there aint the work then somehow we are going to have to totall reorientate the fantastic budgets available to the public sector away from "pen pushers" and "management" and direct it to actual work. The village I live in is now a "disgrace" when compared to similar "middle class" village I travel through when visiting my children in England. We used to have a village "cleaner" who was wonderful and plodded through the place and it was clean and tidy. We now see the council with vast machines/contractors who make more mess than theyinherited. There is a dignity in work and for children to grow up thinking that they can live with out it leads to the problems we are seing in society. I would suggest you look at the empire building of WAG in relation to "careers advice" in West Wales and this probably can be extended throughout Wales.
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While there are some who see unemployment as a career choice they are few in number. Almost everyone is better off working - the stories of people who earn more on the dole than in work are somewhat false as it ignores the inwork benefits people can get.
However the long term sick generally are long term sick and it does no good to force them into jobs that they will lose in a few months due to factors such as depression.
Yes there are people who with retraining can work. But where is the quality retraining? I don't mean 2 week confidence building courses, or 6 weeks basic access to computing courses but the real long term training needed to re skill people. Where are the supportive work environments that can cope with someone who has a depressive illness that means they can't function for 3 weeks out of 12? Where pressures are kept to a minimum?
And as Noah says the figures don't stack up, probably 2 million out of work by Christmas and few vacancies. Many of which are with agencies that take you on for a few weeks and discard you. Then you have the whole problem of resigning on and waiting for benefits to restart. Agencies that get paid a substantial amount to find people and then only pass on a fraction of what they are paid.
When working in this area - supporting the long term unemployed back to work - I found that a fair proportion of the people I worked with were trapped in this cycle of short term work. Agencies taking them on for a few weeks and then telling them there was no work only to take more people on the next day to do the same job. These people became very disheartened at this treatment understandably.
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