Suicide Prevention project

Dr Ian Marsh from Canterbury Christ Church University has been working with the multiagency Kent and Medway Suicide Prevention Group to address rising suicide rates across the county.

Last year Ian’s work focused on older adults, with a ten week RED Student Internship enabling a review of relevant literature, consultations with key stakeholders (including Samaritans, Maytree, Kent Police, KCC Public Health, Network rail and AGE UK), and recommendations for the prevention group to take forward.

This year the main focus has been on prison suicides. Throughout 2014, there was a large increase in the number of prisoners taking their own lives across the prison estate. 82 prisoners killed themselves making it the worst year for suicides in jail since 2007. Ian has been working with a range of stakeholders — Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust mental health prison in-reach service, NHS England commissioners, KCC Public Health leads, Samaritans Listener scheme volunteers, and Sheppey Group prison management — to address the recent rise in suicides at Elmley Prison in Kent. The project has involved delivering, alongside Oxleas mental health in-reach, Suicide Awareness Training for a range of staff at Elmley.

In addition, another RED Student Internship has focused on developing a suicide prevention programme to address the increase in prison suicides across Kent. This 10 week project ran from May-July 2015, and involved a review of existing literature and data around prison suicides and prevention, meeting with key stakeholders who could give a deeper insight into these issues (e.g. the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, the Howard League for Prison Reform, Samaritans Listener scheme co-ordinator), and presenting initial findings to stakeholders, including the Kent & Medway suicide prevention steering group, and Kent and Sussex Regional Safer Custody Forum. 

Ian is also involved in the ‘critical suicidology’ project with a group of international scholars. The group, which includes suicide attempt survivors, social justice activists, those bereaved by suicide, indigenous people, narrative therapists, critical theorists, and anthropologists, have a new book, ‘Critical Suicidology’ (co-edited by Ian), which will be published by UBC Press this Autumn.

Ian is also co-organising an international conference, ‘Suicidology’s Cultural Turn, and Beyond’, to take place at The Institute of Ethnology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Charles University in Prague, next Spring.