Whilst the name suggests prevention, which of course is the ultimate aim, activities that will be taking place today, around the world, are focused upon awareness. As I sit here, a thought resonates; I guess to many it might be shocking that in the twenty-first century, there remains a taboo around suicide and that we actually need to set aside a day, in effort to break this.
I expect everyone reading this blog will have had professional experience of suicide, and a number will have been impacted personally too. Tragically the numbers speak for themselves. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in 2019 nearly 5,700 people in England and Wales took their own life. Since 2018 these numbers have been rising compared with some stability in the preceding decade. Whilst there are as yet no statistics for 2020, it is reasonable to believe that with issues relating to lockdown, potential unemployment, and a disproportionate financial impact on the self-employed that we witnessed last year, at best numbers will have stayed high, at worse they will have got higher.
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