Suicide: Mental Health Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people experiencing suicidality or who have attempted suicide receive sustained, trauma-informed and long-term support beyond crisis intervention, including through better integration of NHS services with community-led organisations such as Body & Soul, particularly for people from marginalised communities.
Answered by Dr Zubir Ahmed
The Government is committed to ensuring that people experiencing suicidal thoughts or who have attempted suicide receive compassionate, personalised, and sustained support.
The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England 2023 to 2028 outlines our cross‑sector approach to improving support for people who experience suicidality, including tailored support for priority groups and improved integration between services. Voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations are vital in providing community‑based trauma‑informed support alongside clinical services.
The 10-Year Health Plan supports this approach through a shift towards community‑based prevention and services. This includes closer collaboration between the National Health Service, local authorities, and VCSE partners to improve access to integrated, long‑term support.
Last year, NHS England published Staying Safe from Suicide: Best Practice Guidance for Safety Assessment, Formulation and Management, which promotes a more holistic, person-centred approach to suicide prevention with accompanying e-learning. The NHS medium-term planning framework requires integrated care boards to ensure practitioners undertake training and deliver care in line with this guidance from 2026/27.
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