Key Summary
- NHS launches new e-learning for all mental health staff to better spot and support people with suicidal thoughts
- Training is guided by new national guidance: more holistic, compassionate, person-centred
- Part of wider mental health improvements: 24/7 crisis support via NHS 111 + new neighbourhood centres
NHS is offering a new e-learning course for all the mental health staff amid soaring suicide rates.
The course provides practical, evidence-based advice to identify struggling individuals with suicidal thoughts.
It follows national guidance published earlier this year indicating a shift to a more compassionate, person-centred and holistic method of preventing suicide.
Based on evidence and lived experience, the guidance underpins the training, equipping staff to integrate the new approach into their everyday work.
The course is open to NHS mental health practitioners, as well as voluntary, private and charity sector practitioners.
Through this course the NHS hopes to improve accessibility to improved mental health.
The NHS had earlier introduced round-the-clock crisis mental health support via NHS 111, and is launching six neighbourhood mental health centres open 24/7 nationwide for people with severe mental illness.
“The NHS is always evolving to make things better for patients and this latest training builds on the guidance which was spearheaded by the incredible work of Philip Pirie, whose son Tom passed away after being judged low risk of suicide,” said Claire Murdoch, national director for mental health at NHS England.
“This new prevention training is grounded in NICE 2022 guidance and aligns with the Government’s 5-year Cross Sector National Suicide Prevention Strategy,” she added.
Minister for mental health, Baroness Merron said, “This new suicide awareness course is one of the many ways we are working to reduce the number of lives lost to suicide, including delivering the Suicide Prevention Strategy, rolling out 24/7 mental health neighbourhood centres, and transforming mental health services with an extra £688 million.”
