I believe that the new National Suicide Prevention Strategy launched this week will empower communities and individuals to improve their mental health.
The new strategy, ‘Connecting For Life’, aims to reduce the rate of suicide and self-harm by 10% over the next five years.
Suicide and self-harm prevention is everyone's concern and communities like our own have a critical role to play in helping to bring rates down.
This new national plan sets out how Government and the whole of society can work together to reduce the rate of suicide and self-harm among specific groups who are most at risk.
Dealing with the current high levels of suicide and deliberate self-harm is a priority for myself and my colleagues in Government. Minister Kathleen Lynch has done a significant amount of work in putting structures in place to ensure that people get the right type of treatment in the right place at the right time.
The development of this new strategy is one example of Minister Lynch’s work and I am hopeful that it will lead to a greater integration of services, heightened awareness in communities and better-supported local organisations.
It contains 69 separate actions and it replaces the previous Suicide Prevention Strategy, ‘Reach Out’, which came to the end of its 10-year term at the end of last year.
Among those actions include promoting a better understanding of suicidal behaviour; supporting communities; targeted approaches for vulnerable groups; improved access, consistency and integration of services; providing safe and high-quality services; and better data and research.
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