Every 40-90 seconds there is a suicide in the UK. A suicide that could have been prevented if the system was better. Almost 80% of the incidents involve men, while the remaining 20% involve women and individuals who are non binary. 

Each year, over 800,000 people commit suicide, while 19% of adults, 46% of teenagers, and 13% of children suffer from mental illness.

Almost everyone has experienced mental health services of some kind at some point, from basic psychological services to crisis teams, and most people take mental health medications daily.

In March 2018, it was released that at least 930,000 people had received a prescription for some form of antidepressants and more than half of these people have had an attempt to end their life.

Worldwide, there are 24 suicide attempts for every successful one. More than half of these people, when assessed by the crisis mental health team in a general hospital, end up requiring a psychiatric hospital bed. However, these places do not have enough capacity to support them. With all these beds being unavailable, there should be more resources available in the community to help support these individuals. There is also a shortage of mental health professionals. This means that individuals that are struggling do not receive the adequate help that they deserve. Therefore, they end up being left alone in their crisis, which leads to another potential suicide attempt.

Both psychiatric hospitals and community mental health teams are in need of more funding, staff and resources in order to be able to provide the necessary help. It isn't unusual for mental health professionals to give their own opinion over their professional one, which is problematic. A lot of the time, mental health teams focus on how their building looks to outsiders than how their patients are receiving their care. This is NOT how it should be. If funding was put towards more staff and resources, then more people would feel confident enough to reach out for support before things become too much for them to handle.

Mentally ill individuals who have been placed under a section of the mental health act (s2,3, etc) have successfully ended their lives while under professional care. This should not be allowed to happen. About 30% of suicides happen on psychiatric wards, and 10% occur on PICU wards. Between 2012 and 2017, there were 271 successful suicide attempts on psychiatric wards throughout the UK. This shows that individuals who are reaching out for help are ignored or their issues are not picked up on. This is because there simply aren't enough nurses to ensure the safety of the people on the ward. There is also an increase in self-harm occurences on psychiatric wards, which could also be prevented if staff had more time to check their belongings properly. Between 10 and 20 percent of adolescent in-patients will self-harm at least once during their stay, and a proportion of these will self-harm as many as 130 times. The same percentage is found in adults too.

Following this, individuals who are neurodivergent are also at high risk of self-harm and suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for individuals with autism. People with ASD make up approximately 1% of the population, but make up 11% of suicides. It is also incredibly common for an individual with autism to be moved across the UK for a psychiatric bed. This leads to a decline in their mental state and increased risks of self-harming behaviours and suicides.

In conclusion, I believe that we as a country need access to more psychiatric beds, more crisis houses, and more trained mental-health professionals. There is no doubt that professionals should have informed sessions with individuals who are battling mental health disorders, instead of just being 'text-book trained'. They could then in turn learn more effective ways of helping us in a crisis if they listened and acted upon the words we say. They should have yearly or 2 yearly training in order to ensure that they are performing to the highest level of their abilities. Professionals should stop punishing us by taking our belongings in psychiatric hospitals, as this can easily exacerbate a situation. We wouldn’t have our property removed from us in the community, so why should we in the psych wards? If these things were to happen, we could potentially lower the number of suicides that happen in a day, a month, even a year. As of now, there have been 28,529 suicides this year (2023); 2,091 have occurred today alone. With more funding, there could be a change! We need this change!