Significant Rise In Suicides Driven By Men Taking Their Own Lives.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published the latest figures for suicides in England and Wales. They make for grim reading; particularly if you're male.

In 2019 5621 people in England and Wales took their own lives, three quarters of whom (4303) were men, continuing what has been a consistent trend since the nineties.

Deaths by suicide of men are currently at a rate of 16.9 per 100,000, the highest they have been since 2000, death rates for women are at 5.3 per 100,000, also the highest they have been since 2004.

Nick Stipe head of analysis at the ONS told the Independent that the rise in suicides was 'significant', going on to add that 'while the exact reasons for this are unknown', but that it was 'largely driven by an increase amongst men, who have continued to be most at risk of dying by suicide'

If we were talking about deaths from coronavirus a rate of 16.9 in 100,000 and rising would be starting alarm bells ringing and ministers would be talking about interventions. Unfortunately this is suicide, about which there is still a powerful taboo, and so the response has been decidedly muted.

The comparison with the virus that has turned the world upside down is meant to do more than shock. These figures are for 2019 before it was even a malicious rumour, when the post COVID ones land next year they will be worse; much worse.

A spokesperson for the Samaritans told the Daily Mirror on the day the figures were released that while the focus of government is, rightly, coping with a highly infectious virus, 'it is of the utmost importance that the focus on suicide prevention is not lost'.

Adding that the impact of the pandemic on 'the nation's emotional well-being will take some time to play out, but we know that many people have struggled with mental health issues during this time'.

The government, the spokesperson concluded, 'cannot afford to lose sight of these long term impacts and must ensure mental well-being is at the heart of our national recovery'.

This is a truth so important it should be carved in stone, unfortunately it is also a deeply inconvenient one and therefore is likely to be ignored. The inconvenience rests in the fact that much of the harm involved is the direct result of government policy. Austerity and an economy based on a race to the bottom where all but the lucky few live on a knife edge of uncertainty is bad for your health; sometimes it can be downright deadly.

Every suicide is, to some extent an enigma, understandable only to the individual who has been pushed to the limit by a very personal trauma. They do though also exist within a social context over which we all have some degree of control.

We have in recent years got better at talking about mental illness in general, even Tory cabinet ministers can stand up at press conferences and say that its 'OK not to be OK' and sound almost like they mean it. Suicide though is still a subject that makes pretty much everyone in the room start taking an inordinate amount of interest in the light fittings whenever it is mentioned.

Too often the lazy stereotypes about suicide being the sort of thing that weak or selfish people do, probably to get attention are trotted out because they make a noise loud enough to make our collective feeling of being uncomfortable with vulnerability. For men, who are often still fed the line at an impressionable age that admitting to being vulnerable is shameful this is a disaster. Their learnt response is to clam up and clamp down on difficult feelings, sometimes until it is too late.

Things aren't helped by the permanently parlous state of mental health services. Imagine being a man who has overcome centuries of cultural programming to ask for help, only to find that accessing it involves jumping through an assault course of hoops. One where at any moment you can be sent sliding down a snake back to the start.

I'd like to hope that these latest suicide figures, along with the society wide crash course in experiencing anxiety provided by the pandemic, might provide a massive wake-up call. The cynical devil sat on my shoulder keeps whispering into my ear that it won't though.

Humans are are social animals, faced with an existential threat we, in the short-term at least, tend to all pull together. We are also though programmed to seek security and certainty, never more so than in the wake of a massive cultural shock.

There is a reason why the Second World War, with which our current troubles are often lazily compared, was followed by a couple of decades of social conservatism. After years of upheaval people wanted leaders and policies that reminded them of happier and safer times, not the shocks and scares inherent to creating a new and hopefully better society.

We will want the same when COVID is finally consigned to the history books, an arm wrapped around our shoulders, not a stern hand pointing towards the future. That, alas, does not make for an environment conducive to talking honestly about mental distress or what is sometimes, though thankfully not nearly always, its outcome.