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Duke of Cambridge welcomes national task force on male suicide

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Today the Duke of Cambridge will join the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) at the launch of a unique coalition of front-line services to help tackle the issue of male suicide, the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK.

Convened by CALM, the coalition includes The Samaritans and front-line services from land, sea, and air: National Rail, Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), Highways England, British Transport Police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Chief Fire Officers Association and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives.

The aim is to pool all members’ substantial expertise in dealing with suicide at first-hand to develop a resource which helps men identify and support others, and themselves, when down, depressed or suicidal. The coalition will also include male grooming brand Lynx, one of CALM’s key partners.

The Duke of Cambridge welcomes the coalition, to which he will bring his own experience as a Search and Rescue helicopter pilot. He will attend the coalition’s inaugural round table discussion and then visit the RNLI Tower Lifeboat Station to meet first responders who deal with male suicide on a daily basis.

With an estimated daily cost of £20 million, male suicide accounts for 76% of all suicides in the UK. It has a huge impact not only on individuals and families, but also on the workforce of many frontline services and other organisations.

Jane Powell, CEO of CALM, said: “Suicide is frequently bracketed as the actions of the ‘mentally ill’. However, from our helpline we know that men who are suicidal are often tackling the kinds of life problems which can affect any of us, male or female, although it’s damned hard for men to admit to needing help or even find it. With the support of these male-dominated industries who know only too well the impact of suicide, we’re determined to normalise getting men help.”

Jonny Benjamin, who was stopped from jumping from a bridge by a stranger, said:“It’s great to see this fantastic coalition of emergency and transport agencies come together with CALM and Samaritans around the issue of male suicide. There is a real need for a resource to help men feel able to offer help, whether that’s a stranger on a bridge or your best mate.”

The male suicide prevention coalition is announced ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week (16 – 22 May) and the launch of Heads Together, a national campaign spearheaded by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry to promote mental wellbeing.

‘More UK men have killed themselves in the past year than all British soldiers killed since 1945’

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More men in the UK have killed themselves in the past year than all British soldiers fighting in all wars since 1945, according to a new edition of Newsweek magazine dedicated to the issue of male suicide.

The edition, which is published alongside an in-depth e-book on the crisis, follows new figures by the ONS that show men are now killing themselves at their highest rate for a decade.

According to Newsweek “Across Europe, men are around four times more likely to die by suicide than women” and suicide kills “three times more people than road accidents, more than leukaemia, more than all infectious and parasitic diseases combined.”

“More than 6,000 people in the UK died by suicide in 2013; 78% of them were men.”

Failure of services

In addition to a stark and detailed breakdown of the figures, the magazine outlines the failure of UK authorities to address the crisis.

The magazine reports, “In 2002, following the release of a report, The Sadness of Young Men, detailing Scotland’s disproportionately high male suicide rate, the Scottish government announced its intention to reduce suicide by 20% in the space of 10 years. When 2013 came around, rates were down by 19%.”

In London in November last year, a community-based mental health facility considered a lifeline to its members, was threatened with closure in a cost-cutting drive by the local council.

‘Provide and protect’

In early January, with the council’s decision still pending, one of its male members threw himself under a train, the magazine reports.

Newsweek quotes a number of the leading figures in the UK movement to address men’s mental health, including Jane Powell of the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Dr Martin Seager of Men’s Minds Matter.

Seager told the magazine that there is a danger in approaches to tackling men’s mental health that tells them they should me more like women.

He told Newsweek: “The way I look at it, if men have evolved as fathers, protectors and survivors, they are going to feel life is worth living to the extent they can provide and protect.”

Image credit: Newsweek

Article by Dan Bell

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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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Male suicide prevention charity launches webchat service

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Male suicide prevention charity, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), have launched a free web-chat service offering support, information and signposting to men who are depressed or in crisis.

From today, the service will be open daily between 6pm – 9pm. Users within the UK will be able to chat anonymously and confidentially to trained helpline staff.

Within the next eight week’s, the charity said the web-chat service hours will be extended to match those of its telephone helpline — from 5pm to midnight. 

CALM said that research with their supporters identified a need to offer online provision, alongside their helpline and texting service, in order to make accessing support easier to a younger male audience.

Suicide is the leading killer of men aged 20-49 in the UK, and has overtaken coronary heart disease as a killer in older men aged up to 50.  The latest statistics show that 77% of all suicides in the UK were male.

CALM said its telephone helpline takes around 4,000 calls a month.

The web-chat can be accessed on the CALM website: www.thecalmzone.net/get-help

By Dan Bell

Photo courtesy: Mic445

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