I know more people who've committed suicide than I do who've died of Covid

[BagsOFr]

4 people (not all friends but people I know from around my area) have now committed suicide, one being the brother of a friend. I know multiple more who've gone missing after a MH crisis and been found thankfully alive.

AIBU to think there HAS to have a massive overhaul of the MH services in this country after this shit show? This can't be allowed to go on silently. I know everyone is very focused on Covid and I appreciate why, but I don't know a single person who's died from Covid and yet here I am, seeing another person who's taken their own life because of this situation. It seems to be such a bigger issue than anyone wants to admit.

I totally agree OP
I know of 3 people ... it will be a pandemic of mental health after .. I am suffering with mine too

@OojamaflipAndThingamajig

Mental Health services are woefully inadequate and have been totally underfunded for years. It should be a major priority. This is a ticking time bomb for want of a more appropriate phrase. Equally Covid is obviously a major priority, not only because of the tragic loss of life and long term effects on so many people but because of the huge strain put on the NHS. An NHS which has been buckling under such pressure for so long. Surely both Covid and mental health services need to be the top of the agenda for this government?

I have worked for the NHS for a long time. I have a very good friend who is a RMN and the problem is recruitment , nobody wants to do the job. Most of her time is dealing with pedophiles, drug addicts, violent criminals, anorexic women and alcoholics. It's not for the faint hearted either. You have to cope with patients intent on commiting suicide and you being the target of violent assault. Mental Units are quite stark and functional too. It takes a certain type of person to handle all that , day in day out. And there aren't that many around, I wouldn't do it. Its one of those things that everybody agrees we need more of but nobody is parpared to do it.

I know why you've linked the two but I don't think you'll get any sensible answers by suggesting it needs to be one or the other.

However, that does seem to be where we are. A year ago anxiety and other MH issues were serious issues which needed nothing but sympathy. Woe betired anyone suggesting someone needs to get a grip, yet somehow that's where we've got to. Has anyone seen a sympathetic response to someone who's struggling with masks etc? Poor MH has somehow become something people need to suck up.

@inquietant labour would have been as bad !!!! Maybe even worse

I have not suggested it's a competition. I don't believe it is. In fact it's only when you dare to mention any other issue other than Covid that people start trying to make it into one.

But that is kind of what your OP implied, and this is how so many Covid-denying threads start. However, your subsequent posts are more nuanced, and I quite agree with what I think you’re saying. Suicides are just the tip of the MH iceberg, just as deaths are the tip of the Covid iceberg and we should absolutely not allow ourselves to be divided into factions.

MH provision has been appalling since...well, forever. That has to change. During my brief skirmish with debilitating anxiety I was offered CBT which was utterly useless and counterproductive (counsellor was lovely, but wouldn’t let me talk about the thing I was terrified of...). I was fortunate enough to be able to pay for something better.

I am so sorry for your loss.

My experience of Mental Health Services has been crap. One of my dds pre COVID was referred to CAMHS due to school based and social anxiety. She has other physical issues and has recently been diagnosed with Autism.
CAMHS approach was to initially to make us feel we were to blame, ignore the anxiety and do a short intervention on a self limiting issue which failed and caused the anxiety to ramp up so much that dd missed a whole year of school and we were nearly taken to Court. Probably would have if Lockdown didn't happen.
She is still barely receiving any treatment. Although now it's due to her therapist having COVID.
So yes we have always had a MH crisis.
I

Austerity has come home to roost in so many ways due to Covid.

@London1977 totally agree all governments have underfunded ...

I know of 5 people who have died in the last 6 months, all elderly and none of covid. I know of 1 person who has died of that, and I haven't heard of a suicide for at least 10 or 15 years.

Just for a bit of perspective.

I agree with you that the mental health services are in crisis.

I disagree with you that no one's talking about it. I'm getting weekly emails at work asking about my mental health!

I think that the NHS needs a complete rehaul (along the lines of some European countries, not the terrible US system). I think this was true before covid (as a result of our ageing population), but maybe covid has brought it into the spotlight even more.

@BagsOFr

I think studies into the numbers of suicides right now are sort of irrelevant at the moment. It goes further than just the people who've actually committed suicide. And it'll go on for longer than this pandemic. You can't conclusively put a number on it in the same way. There's people who've attempted but haven't, there's people who have suicidal thoughts/feelings, depression, and so on... People who will reach this point further down the line when the effects of this go beyond the immediate threat of Covid, unemployment, recession and so on.

OP you put a number on it. That was the point of your post. You quoted a number that you know of. A number that represents a significant enough proportion of the total number of annual suicides for it to be an exceptional experience. Which you have used as the basis of your argument.

Mental health deterioration is often discussed as a consequence of living in a pandemic. It is a fairly predictable one. And it would be the same in a time of recession or war. Which would be why we should have had better MHS in the first place. But even then the pandemic would have had an impact on the running and delivery of the service.

If you want to lobby for more investment and better management of mental health services, then do so. But I would suggest that you decouple it from COVID. Because in the long term the pandemic will end but the need for better MHS will continue.

Btw, MHS have been chronically neglected and overlooked by all governments and the NHS leadership (including the vested clinical leadership) since it’s inception. The public haven’t wanted to know either.

It's not a competition as others have said. The NHS is on it's knees. having worked in the NHS for 30 years and seen the normal pressure it exists under, I am actually amazed how well it appears to be doing at the moment. I think as a community need to be taking more care of vulnerable people isolated on their own during this pandemic. I know it's hard when we can't physically see people. Our village has been amazing and really set up a support of volunteers, leaflets were put through every door during the first wave making people aware of what help was available, mental health support and practical support .

I am shocked by some of the comments on here I know people died of covid and suicide .... I was suicidal once and it is horrendous... covid /suicide both awful and the suicides etc has gone up my doctor told me she is getting mainly calls of people in utter distress..

@ArtemisBean

I hope when all this is over they do a thorough and transparent study into how many people lost their lives due to the impact of Covid rather than Covid itself. At the moment nobody seems to matter unless they test positive. It's absolutely tragic for all those whose essential treatment has been delayed and who have been pushed over the edge by the fallout.

I think shortness of life will be a huge factor as a result. Old and vulnerable people locking themselves away for a year a key example. That won't help life expectancy.

It’s not cool to say ‘committed’ suicide anymore. Suicide is no longer a crime:

However, that does seem to be where we are. A year ago anxiety and other MH issues were serious issues which needed nothing but sympathy. Woe betired anyone suggesting someone needs to get a grip, yet somehow that's where we've got to. Has anyone seen a sympathetic response to someone who's struggling with masks etc? Poor MH has somehow become something people need to suck up

Absolutely. I have seen so much of this. Perhaps saying it's not being talked about was incorrect, but the way it's being talked about or looked at definitely seems to have shifted from what I am personally seeing, including on here. Like you say, where a year ago it would have been very sympathetic, it's now more along the lines of 'get a grip, there's worse things going on' etc...

And I can't decouple it from Covid. I believe it's because of this situation that I am seeing this.

It was not my intention to deny Covid or the fact that people are dying from it, I apologise if that's how it came across. I was simply pointing out that I am seeing a really alarming trend through my community and it feels like it's bubbling to become a very very serious issue. And it doesn't help that everyone is so focused on turning on each other these days.

@Babyroobs

It's not a competition as others have said. The NHS is on it's knees. having worked in the NHS for 30 years and seen the normal pressure it exists under, I am actually amazed how well it appears to be doing at the moment. I think as a community need to be taking more care of vulnerable people isolated on their own during this pandemic. I know it's hard when we can't physically see people. Our village has been amazing and really set up a support of volunteers, leaflets were put through every door during the first wave making people aware of what help was available, mental health support and practical support .

The NHS is only coping because they're throwing everything at covid and kicking everything else into the long grass, such as cancer tests/treatment, non urgent surgery, routine appts, even transplants! I'd not say that's "doing well".

I'm sorry for your losses OP. Sadly MH services have been inadequate for years. 6 years ago I had a traumatic event I couldn't get to grips with. There was no one to help me. My GP wouldn't put me on a waiting list for a psychologist because it was over two years long. She could only offer me a CBT course online and that wasn't appropriate for my needs. I never did get any proper help, I've just been on antidepressants for 6 years. I've tried to get off them but just felt I couldn't cope with everyday things and I become an angry monster without them. As for paying for help, counsellors charge around £60 per hour around here, and I don't have that kind of money. So antidepressants for life it is then.

The 2 suicides I know of were totally unrelated to Covid so just looking at the number of suicides will not be helpful. (One died, age 39, because they overdosed on drugs again after being an addict for 25 years. The other, who suffered OCD and was 20, took their own life because they didn't want to be at uni and feared letting their parents down because their sister was so successful). Both female in case in case it is relevant.
The friend who died aged 57 from Breast Cancer was undergoing chemo so wasn't overlooked during Covid.

IME, we don't have good MH services even in non-Covid times, in terms of Community mental health teams. My relative's CMHT are pretty useless. Their new CPN has spoken to them for 5 minutes during the pandemic. Their previous one frequently didn't turn up to appointments, didn't apologise for not doing so, and was always having time off. I don't think it matters how much money is thrown at MH services, we need to change the culture of many people working in CMHTs. First, get them to treat 'service users' with basic respect.

Good and relevant thread but you'll get people still screaming that Covid is more important than anything. I know more people who've died of cancer then Covid,including a 39 year old femal friend last Sept who was misdiagnosed all this year despite having an incredibly aggressive form of cancer. She actually hesitated using the NHS in April when she sprained her ankle and left it a week before going to A&E because she didn't want to go because of Covid. Her missed diagnosis was definitely due in part to Covid. And who's to tell anyone that her life and treatment she could have received is any less important than Covid patients. Because it wasn't.

Suicide is horrendous and a tragedy each time. And you're right, our NHS should be much better funded, especially in mental health services.

However, statistically, less than 6,000 people died from suicide in 2019 whereas 80,000ish people have died from Covid between March 2020 and now (not even a full year). We need to put out attention on the areas causing the most deaths.

The third lockdown triggered an “unprecedented crisis” in mental health issues, amid a surge in calls to mental health helplines, with leading charities and psychiatrists urging the government for more support...

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/12/third-lockdown-has-triggered-unprecedented-crisis-mental-health/

Hardly surprising as isolation prior to being used on a whole population as an experimental method of virus control was only used as an extreme punishment for criminals and during conflicts. It's effects are known to drive people quite literally mad. Prisoners held under such conditions are usually put on suicide watch.

Yes me too.

I have a wide range of family and friends, around 60% have had or recovering from covid. None have died, even 'high risk' older members of our family.

The youngest of the suicides close to us was 15, and that to me is just unbearably sad. He was a beautiful boy with his whole life ahead of him, and he could not cope in the lockdown. He would never have died from covid, but he died due to the pressure of being locked down for too long. I don't know how his parents cope every day.

The latest suicide was a friend of mine aged 40, no one had any idea she was in such a bad place, it was totally shocking.

The cure is fast becoming worse than the disease in my view. The impact on young people is horrendous. But what can we do, the hospitals apparently can't cope, so we will have to continue on losing people to this. I haven't the words right now.

Sorry for your losses op
Don’t want to derail the thread but the suggestion that labour underfunded the NHS as much as the tories is just wrong. Read the Kings fund report. It suggests that many new labour policies/initiatives massively improved the NHS. Huge amounts of money were ploughed into the NHS which reduced waiting times and increased staff numbers. Wasn’t all perfect obviously but to deny progress wasn’t made is clearly a lie.

@Pillowcase123

Suicide is horrendous and a tragedy each time. And you're right, our NHS should be much better funded, especially in mental health services.

However, statistically, less than 6,000 people died from suicide in 2019 whereas 80,000ish people have died from Covid between March 2020 and now (not even a full year). We need to put out attention on the areas causing the most deaths.

There is no proof that lockdowns have saved any lives. But lockdowns will cause deaths. Not just from suicide but from other health conditions that are going untreated because of lockdowns. The biggest killer will be from the biggest economic recession in living memory that we are heading into caused by the lockdown.