Community crisis care has an important role to play in suicide prevention, ensuring that people have somewhere to go for support and help when they are feeling overwhelmed.
In the past, this has taken the form of helplines and GPs, but now a charity in the north-east is hoping to take this one step further and provide people with mental health safe havens where they can drop in when they’re struggling, giving them an additional source of support in a physical space, rather than a virtual one.
Charity Everyturn opened the first of these safe havens in the region in March 2024 to give people physical safe spaces to go, driven by a rise in mental health-related callouts to local police forces and the fact that the region has the highest suicide rate in the country.
Speaking to the BBC, chief executive Adam Crampsie explained that these new centres will strive to intervene and help people before they need to take up one of the 1,137 acute mental health beds in the north-east and Cumbria.
Funding to the tune of £1 million has been provided by the NHS for the project, with Mr Crampsie saying: “I want 20, 30, 40 or 50 of these. We can’t have too many where suicide rates are so high.”
Kim McGuinness, police and crime commissioner, observed that Northumbria Police have recorded a 152 per cent rise in the number of callouts related to mental health in the last 12 months.
She described the force as being “inundated” with calls as they’re the service of last resort, adding: “If you’re in a mental health crisis, you should not be met by someone in a yellow jacket carrying handcuffs. You need mental health support.”
Similar safe haven walk-in hubs can be found in places like Canterbury, Maidstone and Thanet Safe, where people can access in-person mental health support without referrals and without having to make an appointment.
For further information, contact:
Paul Higham
Suicide Bereavement UK
Tel: 01706 827359
Mobile: 07850 710555
Email: paul.higham@suicidebereavementuk.com