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.

@Icanseegreenshoots

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.

That's so sad, I am so sorry.

I've also seen a big increase in missing persons which are 9 times out of 10, children and teenagers at the moment.

I do wonder whether this sort of thing will be more widely noticed (peers committing suicide, suffering breakdowns, going missing etc...) in younger generations as the ones who's health isn't typically affected directly by Covid but are still suffering the issues that come with lockdowns and restrictions and so on.

@Icanseegreenshoots what’s the answer though ? Tragic I agree about suicides but I really don’t know what the solution is. From a personal point of view I’ve nursed many 40, 50 and 60 year olds who have died from covid, even gave EOL care to a mum in her 30s. What I do know is that lockdown worked for my critical care unit and we haven’t had any patients who’ve attempted suicide for months unlike pre covid.

And by saying that I am not suggesting the young should be left to get on with it as I know some people think. I actually don't know what th answer is. But as a general observation, I do worry about the younger generations.

Well actually I guess the answer would have been to ensure we have a fit for purpose healthcare system in the first places so these either or situations didn't have to occur. If only.

Everyone will have more friends and family suffering from mental health problems than covid.
Rates of mental illness at ANY time are estimated as 1 in 6 of the population, and 1 in approximately 50 people have serious and enduring metal health problems.
Compare that to covid. I believe rates are currently 800 per 100000 in high .
So statistically more people with mental health issues than covid by far at any single day.
Some people won’t be aware they know people with mental illness as it’s not discussed. Some people will know lots of people with covid as it is socially transmissible and will spread through in cluster of the community.

Which is why the disparity of mental health provision vs physical Heath provision is shocking and depressing. But this is not a new thing. It has been the case since mental hospitals were closed and the flawed concept of care in the community was introduced.

In what timescale - since March 2020 when this all started?

I think there's a lot of talking about mental health in the press and so on, but that's not actually much use to people suffering from poor mental health. People need a properly funded, properly staffed mental health service that can offer a variety of therapies, is easy to access and is able to offer sustained support. I can't imagine the bravery it must take to put your hand up and admit you need help. I can very well imagine the Kafkaesque tunnel of NHS admin you subsequently enter (judging by my experiences on the NHS for recurrent miscarriage and my dad when he had dementia and lung cancer) and I can't imagine that knowing that Prince William knows how you feel is much of a comfort really.

Anyone worried about a relative or friends mental health please be aware that if you think their health is at risk you are permitted to visit them. This includes traveling, visiting them in their own home or even staying with them to provide urgent support. It's important to understand that lockdown laws do not apply in such circumstances. Check gov.uk if you are concerned about this but please to not ignore warning signs.

@socketpocket

In what timescale - since March 2020 when this all started?

Yes, in arounf the last 6-8 months. My friend's brother just a few days ago.

And a very alarming number of missing persons being posted on community pages, local police pages etc... A lot of them children.

@Billie18

Anyone worried about a relative or friends mental health please be aware that if you think their health is at risk you are permitted to visit them. This includes traveling, visiting them in their own home or even staying with them to provide urgent support. It's important to understand that lockdown laws do not apply in such circumstances. Check gov.uk if you are concerned about this but please to not ignore warning signs.

Whilst this is true, I think when you see how vicious people are being toward one another right now, it's not surprising that people feel unable to reach out or too scared to.

Lots of calls for better MH services.
Well I work in them so I am not going to resist that.
In terms of funding there certainly is not parity with physical health services.
However people voted in their droves for a Tory Government. Post COVID and Brexit there is not going to be any more money. If mental health services were to get more money who should get less? Or should taxes rise?

However my main point is this
'Mental health services' are often made to be responsible for solving all the ills of society. If you had a terrible childhood where you were neglected and abused, poor education, dead end zero hours job, debt, poverty, crap housing, drink and use drugs to cope and are in an abusive relationship then a few antidepressant pills and visits from a CPN aren't going to solve that. Even getting admitted to hospital would not solve it.

MH services are by and large fairly good at treating major psychotic mental illness ie schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe psychotic depression. (I appreciate a tonne of people will now come on and tell me they are not). These require a big element of biological treatment ie drugs. This is fairly easy to do.

They are not good at personality disorder, autism and the kind of sub clinical anxiety and depression that is often described on here and often rooted mainly in life circumstances.
There just are not very good evidence based treatments for these conditions that anyone can give anyway. Largely psychological therapy is suggested and IAPT was an attempt to address that but people find it too basic and time limited which it is because that's the trade off of availability. There will never be enough highly qualified and skilled psychologists to fill the huge need.

Mental illness is formulated in a bio-psycho-social model and the social part actual MH services have no power over at all. For many people what they need for better mental health is better housing, a better job, not to be in fear of being a victim of crime, debts cancelled abs a secure income.

So yes there will be a tsunami of mental health issues after COVID but mental health services will not be able to help many of them unless people's social circumstances are addressed.

No doubt we will still get the blame though.
In actual fact the blame is on society as a whole that we don't care for one another at a basic level and when voting we choose to keep money in our own pockets. It's completely obvious from thread after thread on here that most people only care about themselves. Endless threads about schools shutting and how hard home learning is and people actually coming out and saying leave the old people to die.

But it's oK MH services can pick up the pieces of abusive men, exploitative employers and crappy parenting. I'm sure if we just tried harder and were less shit we could do it.

I will add that my comment is NOT about priorities for covid.
People say lockdown is not working. It is. Statistics show that where lockdown has been done properly infections reduce. Without lockdown are death rates would have continued to exponentially increase and we’d be looking at even more horrifying numbers.
Remember that currently 1 person is dying of covid every 2 ish minutes.
Mental illness, whilst affecting many people is not responsible for deaths anywhere near that rate. Even in this crisis

There are children who never re appeared on the school register after the first lock down in March. Many of these children were known to be vulnerable...

Yes I know someone who committed suicide last summer.

Mental health services in many areas seem to be atrocious. Covid will only have made that worse due to so many more people now needing to access already over stretched services.

My own son at ten years old was self harming and talking about killing himself (this is before the pandemic, but lockdown definitely had an affect on him, then starting secondary school after missing half of year 6 made things even worse.) He was eventually referred by CAMHS to a small volunteer run counselling service. They said that they'd had so many referrals from CAMHS that they now had a waiting list of over a year. We waited for about 9 months for an appointment in the end because we were willing to travel.

@NancyDrew1966

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.

I quite agree. I worked for the NHS and the positive changes in the service when Tony Blair became PM were quite remarkable. Not just hospitals but GP practices and care in the home. It's all gone downhill again under the Tories, as it did under Thatcher.

Mental Health and Geriatrics are the poor relations of the Health Service.

@Yamaya

It's very sad that people have taken their own lives, and there definitely doe need to be better mental health help inbthis country. But I don't know what that has to do with you personally not knowing anyone who's died of covid. What does that have to do with anything? It HAS happened.... 86 thousand and something?? In less than a year. From something that is contagious. That's why we have had restrictions.

Because if the OP alone knows 4 people who have died from suicidal then in all likelihood the overall stats for suicide are every bit as high as covid. But no one is talking about that. And it is a shameful crisis in this country being largely ignored by the gvt (and former guys).

I know that the ICU at our local hospital was consistently very busy with people who had attempted their own lives all of this year. When they had no covid patients in ICU for many weeks over the summer they continued to have suicide patients. More than usual as people suffered fall out and worsening mental health from pandemic.

Do you get it now?

*former gvts, not guys.

Apols for the typos in my post

I've lost three uncles to Covid and no one (during Covid) to suicide.

It's not a competition.. the situation is shit for everyone.

My sister is a social worker for vulnerable adults at our local council and they are absolutely drowning in the number of people in crisis. They aren't taking on any extra staff due to no funding and no students so have about 30 clients each of which have made suicide attempts or are contemplating it. Something needs to be done to help these people and the staff who are also struggling massively.

I do think there is something to be said about the other improvements that can be made to someone's MH which don't involve actual medical care.

I suffered from suicidal thoughts and self harming and depression a few years ago. A lot of what got me through was actually just surrounding myself with people who loved me. My parents being the main ones. To go to my mums and sit with her and talk and actually hug and be physically cared for for a day was sometimes the difference between me wanting to kill myself and not.

People don't have that right now. And whilst I know it's technically allowed in cases like this, I feel it's actually not in the court of public opinion and people are aware of that. I know if I'd felt in that place now, whilst this was ongoing, I'd have felt a lot of pressure not to do what I needed which was reach out and see the people I needed.

I know two people who have died of suicide (both men, neither known to have serious mental health issues before it happened) and no one who has died of COVID. I know about 50 people who have had it. One was hospitalised for two days but for the others it was a mild illness:

Having said that the ONS statistics don't seem to show any meaningful increase in suicide rates this year, which I found surprising. Maybe more data to be included?

@CovoidofAllHumanity
Yes. Well said. Poor mental health cannot just simply be fixed by better services. It is a societal problem and people's severe enduring MH problems have origins in childhood and in deprivation.

The largest number of people I know who've died haven't died either of suicide or Covid. Two heart attacks, one stroke, two of cancer, and three of nebulous causes (all over 85). I have never known so many people die in a single year before!