Mental Health Action Plan: Prevention of Suicide in University Students in UK

Background

This action plan is going to demonstrate some strategies and new implementation for prevention of suicide ration in university and college student in England, for its coming brief paper assist and outlines. Suicide word came from Latin word “suicidium” that defines as “to kill oneself”. Suicide word means to act intentionally taking own’s life. In every country it has different views. In some countries this is legal also. In UK as per the suicide act 1961 is “the act of suicide in England and Wales so that those who failed in attempt to kill themselves would no longer prosecuted.

According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) suicide rate for a period of 12 month in July 2017 for Higher Education students in England and Wales was 4.7 deaths for 100,000 students. This is most in the previous years’ history.  Male students who are doing higher education have more suicide ratio compare to female.

In the period of 18months (October of 2016 to April of 2018) 11 bristol university students died by suspected suicide. Recently one 20-year-old girl named Maria stancliffe-Cook, who was undergraduate student at Bristol university and she died on 1st august. University are trying to prevent suicide ratio for that they introduced new suicide prevention scheme in that parents where get informed if there are any serious concerns about any student’s mental health.  They also started to offering students classes for happiness that counts in their degree. Same as in university of Liverpool Ceara Thacker, 19-year-old girl was found dead in hall of residence in May 2018.

Faculty of Public Health: Key Competency Area 5
This action plan and briefing paper “Mental Health: Prevention of suicide in university students in UK” is connected to Faculty of Public Health (2014) key competency area 5 which is for “Health Improvement, Determinants of Health, and Health Communication”. It will be detecting and improving the mental health in university students with the help of government, NGOs, Universities, Media, etc.

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Theme
In this action plan main theme is mental health illness of university students which is related to university environment and study culture which can affect to mental health improvement in university student for the age group of 16 to 26. It can also embrace and knowledge and classed given for happiness in university as their degree units. Following point will be discussed more in next briefing paper.

• Importance of study in UK
• Harsh parenting
• Problems with relationships
• Reducing rates of self-harm as a key indicating towards suicide
• Approaching targeted people (18-40-year age) male and female via social media and other attraction sources
• Statistical analysis on current status of suicide
• Effects of unemployment on health
• Prevention of suicide
• Policies and strategies
• Promoting health education in universities and colleges
• Antibullying squads at universities and colleges
• Steps taken by governments and NGOs for awareness and preventing suicide
• UK government policies for suicide prevention
• Future plans and implementation
• Outcomes of strategies

Policies
In the United Kingdom, suicide prevention policy has evolved and grown dramatically throughout recent decades as concerns about suicide rates have risen. It has taken the form of an integrated cross-government policy in England since September 2012. The main objective of which is to prevent people from taking their own lives. This has included a pledge since 2016 to reduce the rate of suicides in England by 10 percentage by 2020/21, which will be calculated by the government against the rate of registered suicides in 2016.

This builds on the previous government strategy that was headed by the Health Department and established in 2002 by the Labour Government. However, more than this previous initiative, the Strategy's current iteration operates deliberately and explicitly at a cross-governmental level involving a variety of different, though overlapping, policy areas such as Health services, Education, Employment, Social securities, Transports, Media, etc.

In the Northern Ireland Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride said: “We have already seen the positive difference that some of the new initiatives from the strategy are making to people’s lives.  The Multi Agency Triage Team is working in partnership with the Health and Social Care sector, PSNI and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service to provide on the spot mental health support to people who are in distress. This programme has recently been expanded and is now available in the Belfast and South Eastern HSC Trust Areas.”

New Initiatives

• Mental health education in the course is compulsory in the schools from September 2020
• In 2016 government announced 3 million GBP budget for preventing and tackling bullying
•  students against depression organisation started website that offering advice, Information, and resources to those who suffering from depression.
• Student Minds is the charities that work for student’s mental health in the United Kingdom.
• Night Line this service is running by students for students. Trained students are answering calls and emails in personal.
• University of Bristol Creating an environment that promotes wellbeing, good mental health and social connectedness and supports the development of life skills and emotional resilience
• Partnership with healthcare organisations, government officials, policy makers, universities and colleges.

Strategy

• Investment in mental health services for children and young people has made £1.4 billion available, which means that United Kingdom is now investing more then ever on mental health.
• As with adults, children and young people need effective crisis care, with staff experienced in supporting adults in distress and their families under the age of 18. NHS England prioritizes the improvement of crisis support for children and young people. We sponsored the growth of CYP’s emergency and urgent mental health care and intensive home care programs, including testing and evaluating models for crisis response.
• Multi-department promotion will be done highlighting hotline number including newspapers, news channels, social media, public transport, institutes, radio and leaflet.
• Creating new Mental Health Support Teams, supervised by NHS children and young people’s mental health staff, to deliver interventions in or close to schools and colleges for those with mild to moderate mental health needs
• Trialling a four-week waiting time for access to specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services, as we roll out the new Mental Health Support Teams. This builds on the expansion of specialist NHS services already underway.
   

Implications
The main purpose for this project is to reduce ration of suicide in children and young university or college students which is causing by many factors like study stress, harsh parents, relationships, etc. which leads to harm oneself and effecting to many growing lives.

Conclusion
In this stressed life, it is required to find happiness in every moment and spreading happiness. Now a day’s suicide in university or college student is biggest issue of not only UK but whole world. It is big loss for future intelligence. It is highly required to take actions by universities, parents, and public health department.

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References 

• CearaThackerdeath at university of Liverpool BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-49730932
• Sarah caul (June 2018): Estimating suicide among higher education students. Available at Office for National Statistics
• Seven student suicide at Bristol in 16 months. Available at: https://www.joe.co.uk/news/student-suicides-bristol-university-162733
• Peter Stubley, 10th august 2019, Chemistry student dies suddenly in 13th suspected suicide at Bristol University in three years. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/student-death-suicide-bristol-university-maria-stancliffe-cook-a9051606.html
• According to topuniversities One UK Student Dies by Suicide Every Four Days – and the Majority are Male.
• https://papyrus-uk.org/suicide-safer-universities/
• Preventing suicide in England by A cross-government outcome strategies to save lives. 
• Department of Health, Department for Children, Schools and Families, Ministry of Justice and Home Office (2009) Healthy Children, Safer Communities – A strategy to promote the health and well-being of children and young people in contact with the youth justice system.
• New funding for suicide prevention in England by Public Health England and Jackie Doyle-Price MP. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-funding-for-suicide-prevention-in-england
• University of Bristol suicide prevention and Response plan by director of student Bristol. Available at: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/media/strategies/suicide-prevention-response-plan.pdf
• Protect life 2 – Suicide prevention Strategy, Available at: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/protectlife