No job hikessuicide risk

Last month the Sentinel revealed emergency paramedics in Londonderry were rushed to an incredible 1,018 cases of people trying to kill themselves, overdosing on drink or drugs or engaging in such abnormal psychiatric behaviour that 999 had to be called.

The rate is worse for younger people. One in seven deaths of people under 45 in Londonderry last year were registered as suicides, the paper has also reported

The facilitator at Londonderry’s Men’s Action Network (MAN) Michael Lynch - whose research informs a report on the impact of the recession on men’s health - has said there has been increased demand from people seeking help since the onset of the global economic downturn.

Now Mr Poots has admitted there is a wealth of evidence linking unemployment to suicide perhaps providing an explanation as to why the suicide rate in Northern Ireland’s worst economic blackspot is so high.

Mr Poots stated: “There have been a number of research studies undertaken on the relationship between increased unemployment and suicide rates.

“In particular, studies indicate that unemployed people are at 2-3 times more risk of suicide (Platt S, Hawton K. Suicidal behaviour and the labour market. In: Hawton K, van Heeringen K, eds.

“The international handbook of suicide and attempted suicide. New York: Wiley, 2000: 310-84), and that every 1 per cent increase in unemployment is associated with a 0.79 per cent rise in suicides amongst people under 65 years of age (David Stuckler, Sanjay Basu, Marc Suhrcke, Adam Coutts, Martin McKee.

“The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis. outline goes here

“The Lancet, Volume 378, Issue 9786, Pages 124 - 125, 9 July 2011).”

Three weeks ago the Sentinel revealed how ambulances attended an unbelievable 1,018 call-outs in 2011 in the city where the chief complaint was either ‘overdose/poisoning (ingestion)’ or ‘psychiatric/abnormal behaviour/suicide attempts.’

Assuming no-one under the age of 10 tried to kill themselves in 2011 the per capita figure was one episode for every 92 people living in Londonderry.

The 1,018 ambulance call-outs in 2011 in Londonderry alone compared with 978 presentations at Altnagelvin A&E in 2010 by people who had deliberately self-harmed in 2010, although the new figures include paramedics attending accidental overdoses and psychiatric 999 calls that did not involve suicide attempts.

When the figures for the whole of the Western area are taken into account the increase is startling - there were over 2000 ambulance call-outs in the Londonderry, Limavady, Strabane, Omagh and Enniskillen areas in 2011 compared with 1,402 presentations at A&Es in 2010.

Explaining the figures the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) said it does not have a chief complaint that relates to ‘suicide calls’ only and suicide is included in an aggregated field coded as ‘psychiatric/abnormal behaviour/suicide attempts.’