Call for action to prevent suicide

FIANNA FÁIL senator Mary White says she is “disgusted” that three posts of regional suicide prevention officers remain unfilled.

At the publication of a report yesterday on suicide prevention, she said it was essential that the full complement of 11 such officers be filled by the HSE.

Ms White, who wrote the report What We Can Do About Suicide in the New Ireland, also called for improved training for GPs in recognising depression.

“It has been brought to my attention at meetings around the country, by the parents of people who die from suicide, that they had been told by their GPs that there was nothing wrong with their children.”

Ms White noted GPs had a “potentially powerful role in the prevention of suicide”.

She said their potential role was so immense “that it warrants an imaginative and effective orientation and briefing programme for all GPs”. Ms White also called for an end to alcohol sponsorship for music and sporting events.

Alcohol was “strongly associated with deliberate self-harm, suicide and road accidents”, she said.

A recent study in Louth, Meath and Cavan had shown 93 per cent of men under 30 who took their lives had alcohol in their system. An “even more radical approach to changing the binge-drinking culture in Ireland” was necessary.

Another measure that should be considered was restricting access to “lethal means” of suicide.

“I recommend the introduction of legislation to reduce pack sizes of over-the-counter medications which are dangerous in large doses.”

She particularly mentioned paracetamol, some cough-bottle medications and codeine-containing medications such as Solpadeine. She said legislation limiting the sizes of such packets in Britain in 1998 had resulted in a decrease in self-poisoning and live liver transplants.