The Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Shaun Woodward MP, has launched a 12 week consultation period on the draft Suicide Prevention Strategy for Northern Ireland
The Strategy contains a programme for action to reduce the suicide rate in
“SUICIDE hasn’t got time to spare” was one of the key messages from young people delivered to Health Minister Shaun Woodward by the Northern Ireland Commissioner for children and young people, Nigel Williams, in February in
The minister met with children and representatives from NICCY, to receive the report from their ‘Message to the Minister’ campaign.
NICCY have received over 100 challenging, moving and direct responses from young people regarding what they think the Suicide Task force and the Minister should be doing to help young people with mental health issues.
The Minister said “Suicide and self harm are tragic problems and we all need to work together to find better solutions.”
They are particularly keen to hear the views of children and young people and welcome the commission’s initiative.
Suicide is sometimes seen by young people as the final tragic solution to their problems, but work has to be carried out through the help of young people to change these statistical figures of suicides in
In
* 150 suicides each year
* Over 40% of these are young men under 35 years
* However the number of females committing suicide has fallen.
In order to lower the number of suicides been carried out in Northern Ireland we need to find out the causes and try to prevent them from happening in future.
You can download the consultation document on our Downloads page. The Department of Health have also issued a feedback questionnaire about the document which you can view and send back at http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/showconsultations?txtid=15454
Other Websites to visit-:
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3538886.stm
* http://www.barnardos.org.uk/northernireland.htm
