Health professionals’ stereotyping is impeding suicide prevention efforts

The stereotyping of people amid a mental health crisis is hampering efforts in mainstream care services in England to bring down the toll of deaths by suicide, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

The House of Commons Health Committee is looking at what further action needs to be taken ahead of the planned refresh of the previous coalition government’s suicide prevention strategy for England, published in 2012.1

A progress report two years on showed that 4727 people died by suicide in 2013 and that between 2011 and 2013 (the latest period for which data are available) the suicide rate was 8.8 per 100 000 of the population, the same as in 2004-06.2

Expert witnesses …