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Rapper Professor Green tells the BBC about his father’s suicide

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Rapper Professor Green has made a BBC film about his fathers’ suicide to increase awareness of suicide as the biggest killer of men aged 20-45 and raise funds for male suicide prevention charity, the Campaign Against Living Miserably.

He told the BBC: “Despair. It’s a powerful feeling, when your heads in a state it’s easy to feel like you are the only one in the world who’s suffering.”

Green talks about the difficult relationship he had with his dad, how at 18 they stopped talking, but then five years later he tried to arrange a meeting, but they ended up arguing and the last words he said to his dad were “I hate you”.

‘Suicide consumes everyone around that person’

He says: “The terrible thing is, I never got to see him, because a few months later he killed himself. The moment I found out my dada had taken his own life is still as clear today as it was the moment it happened.

“I kept wondering why no-one had seen it coming, I still find it quite hard to articulate how I felt. It’s been six years since it happened and weird thing about grieving is that it never stops.

“Suicide is now the biggest killer of men aged between 20 and 45 in the UK. Bigger than heart disease, bigger than road accidents and bigger than murder.

“The pain of a suicide ripples out to consume everyone around that person.

‘I still don’t know what was going through dad’s head’

“Communication can be a big problem between men. We don’t like to talk about our issues, we think it makes us look weak, or we think we can sort it all out ourselves.

“I still don’t know what was going through my dad’s head when he killed himself and I never got a chance to say a proper goodbye or tell him that I loved him.

“I wish there had been someone he felt he could have confided in or reached out to. That’s why I’m part of a campaign called CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably – an important charity that works hard to help prevent male suicide.”

The film also features comedian Jake Mills, who tells the story of his own attempted suicide and the story of the Stringer family who lost their musician son Hector when he was only 18 years old.

In 2013 6,233 people took their own lives in the UK, 4,858 of these were men. The film is available on BBC iplayer here.

Photo courtesy: Cristian Stefanescu

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  • Nigel

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nick-clegg-calls-for-zero-suicides-across-the-nhs

    The CALM Campaign is supported by this call for targets to address suicide,as most people who commit suicide are known to at least part of the NHS as having problems. The information in Mr Clegg’s release points out that suicide is currently a “male” problem. Certainly this sort of initiative could make a difference to MH and men It is indeed “Gendered” in that the proportions have significantly changed over the past decade with recession and family breakdown both identified as particularly damaging to males. And the service responses to mental health problems for men being identified as less accessible to men as well as males being less likely to approach health professions and more likely to “self medicate” with legal and illegal substances (most obviously alcohol and mood enhancing drugs). Of course the target is suggested for people known to Mental Health services (not addressing the underreporting) But it would be a real boost to addressing the issue. All the more so as currently services tend to be most interested in the “cry for help” attempted suicides, mainly female(and actually reasonably successful in getting help) and perhaps easier to address than aiming to prevent people killing themselves (people in effect who have concluded that a “cry for help” would be futile).