Depression & Suicide

In the United States alone, nearly 40,000 people a year die by suicide. Each of these leaves behind an estimated six or more “suicide survivors” — people who’ve lost someone they care about deeply and are left grieving and struggling to understand. Almost half of "alternative" teenagers - that is, teens identifying as belonging to goth, emo and punk subcultures - self-harm, and nearly 1 in 5 have attempted suicide, according to new research. (Sourced from medical news)

The stigma attached to mental health

The stigma attached to mental health issues is very prevalent in today’s society, and more so in the workplace, employees feel comfortable with illness if its the flu or vomiting, or migraine, but when it comes to mental health issues, people are more inclined to keep quite about it, as they don’t want to be seen as mentally ill, in any way.

According to an article in times online a survey was carried out by a national charity, ‘Shaw Trust’ on thousand people and it found that “18.3% would not reveal a condition to their HR dept, and only 17.9% would reveal an illness to a colleague”.
This is quite a low figure, which clearly shows the stigma attached to Depression and mental illness, from mild to severe. This is mainly due to it being perceived as a weakness, and in our current climate, of redundancies, and business closures, employees don’t want to be seen as weak, in case managers may see this as a flaw and therefore think you are unable to carry out your job as normal.

Study in to Suicide

In that study, Young reported that 53.5% of the goths he studied in Glasgow engaged in non-suicidal self-harm, and 47% claimed that they had attempted suicide.

Men and Suicide

Why are men in mid-life, from disadvantaged backgrounds, more at risk of suicide?

In 1981, 2,466 women in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later, thanks to improvements in psychiatric and emergency care medicine, to a range of suicide prevention barriers and policies and, perhaps, to gradual social, political and personal empowerment, the number in 2012 had almost halved to 1,391.

In 1981, 4,129 men in the UK took their own lives. Three decades later, despite improvements in psychiatric and emergency care medicine, a range of suicide prevention barriers and policies and, arguably, some degree of social, political and personal empowerment, the number in 2012 had risen to 4,590. written by- Ally Fogg

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