Partners in prevention

This work has been produced by the Suicide Prevention Consortium. Following on from our work in 2022 to ensure that insights from people with lived experience informed the Government’s national Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, we sought to understand whether people had an awareness of the strategy and the extent to which they felt they contributed to it. 

Through a survey we heard from 114 people with lived experience of suicide and self-harm or of using Samaritans’ service.  

We sense-checked what we heard in 2022 against what it says in the Government’s strategy to gain insights on whether the final document adequately reflects what people said needed to change. Project participants gave us their views on NHS crisis services, priority at-risk groups that are outlined in the strategy, action to reduce stigma and increase societal understanding of suicide and the intersection between suicide and alcohol.  

We also found that the majority of people who responded to our survey were not aware of the suicide prevention strategy and felt that they hadn’t had an opportunity to contribute.