Action plan needed to tackle high rate of suicide amongst young men

Posted by Bronwen Maher on April 21, 2010 at 04:24 PM

Nessa Childers MEP has told the EU Commissioner for Health at a sitting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg that the Irish government and the European Commission must develop a new EU action plan on mental health to tackle Ireland’s high rate of suicide of young men. Ms Childers demanded an increased emphasis on suicide prevention in Europe from Commissioner John Dalli.
 
Directly addressing the recently installed Commissioner, Ms Childers referenced her experience as a mental health professional and cited three separate, unrelated cases of suicide which occurred at the end of February this year in County Kildare.
 
Ms Childers said: "Recently in my own constituency, three men living within 30 kilometres of each other took their own lives. This is an all too familiar picture in the Ireland of 2010. Anyone who contemplates taking their own lives or indeed friends or family members who have concerns about the mental health of a loved-one need to have services available close by which they can access for support during difficult times.

“Taking Kildare as one example, it is worrying in the extreme to find that those living in the County who may need help are forced to travel up to 100 kilometres to Dublin for services that should be available in every major town and population centre.

“Ironically, while suicide bereavement services exist in nearby towns, there are no services in any of these centres dealing with depression and mental illness, the availability of which would go a long way to help reduce the incidences of people taking their own lives in the first place."
 
Ms Childers, who is Vice-Chair of the new European Parliament Interest Group on Mental Health informed the Commissioner that "a strong initiative to tackle the epidemic of suicide and depression is overdue, and the problem is important enough to become a central concern of the new Commission."
 
In his reply, Commissioner Dalli urged the Irish government to "put policies in place against depression and suicide".
 
Following the discussion, Childers called for "a new Action Plan on Suicide" from the Irish government, in conjunction with the European Commission.
 
Ms Childers said: “A High-Level Report on Suicide published by an Oireachtas sub-committee last year drew attention to the fact that road safety measures account for ten times the amount of investment as suicide prevention measures. This is despite the fact that more people die by suicide than on Ireland’s roads.”

This led Childers to call for increased resources being invested into suicide prevention.
 
"Ireland already has one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the EU, with young males in our country particularly at risk. In order to avert more tragedies, such as those recently experienced in County Kildare, the problem of youth suicide needs to be given a new emphasis in Ireland, with increased financial resources to match.

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