Advice for Jackie Doyle Price (Suicide Prevention Minister) on her first day at work

It shouldn’t be too hard. I will even give you a few tips.

Causes of suicide:
Drug and alcohol misuse, history of trauma or abuse, unemployment, social isolation, poverty, poor social conditions, imprisonment, violence, and family breakdown.

Invest in services (women’s refuges, LGBT services, ESOL provision, etc.) which vulnerable people rely on.

Allow asylum seekers to have jobs.

End benefit sanctions.

Increase welfare so that it acts as a genuine safety net for the unemployed.

Provide meaningful and well-rewarded employment.

Get rid of academy schools, SATs and league tables, which stress our children needlessly.

Invest in mental health provision.

Stop criminalising street drugs – instead control and license their use.

Cut the prison population, by giving the mentally ill support and help, rather than “punishing” them (around 50% of the male prisoners in the US and 73% of female prisoners are mentally ill – I haven’t been able to find figures for the UK).

End austerity, so that millions no longer have to rely on food banks.

Make decent maternity and paternity leave compulsory.

Start building council houses, to begin to end homelessness and give people a secure place to live.

Renationalise the NHS.

Reduce loneliness and isolation for the elderly.

Oh wait, you are a Tory, whose policies are largely responsible for suicides in the first place. The best thing you could do would be to resign. Preferably now.

But we can do something ourselves.

None of this is going to happen under the Tories (red or blue).
Bring on Corbyn. Get rid of the Blairites.
Join a trade union and demand leadership from those who should be leading the struggle.
Join a political party (I am a member of the Socialist Party) and fight for a more humane, just, socialist society.

Tags: jackie doyle price, Politics, suicide prevention, world mental health day