The local police and fire boss has called significantly higher-than-average suicide rates in the region an ’emergency’.
David Allen, police fire and crime commissioner for Cumbria, lamented the rate in the area, which he said was particularly high amongst boys and men.
The commissioner told the Local Democracy Reporting Service, said suicide rates in Westmorland and Furness are significantly higher than the average for England.
The suicide rate in England sits at 10.7 people per 100,000 people, but the rate for Westmorland and Furness is 15.5 deaths per 100,000.
Mr Allen said: “The suicide rates in Barrow-in-Furness and Westmorland & Furness are significantly higher than the average for England.
“Barrow-in-Furness in particular, which is what you’d expect looking at the population demographics, has recorded some of the highest individual district rates and self harm hospital admission rates in England and Wales.”
Speaking on what he believed the cause to be, he said: “Deprivation. Though the statistics are for Westmorland and Furness, it affects Barrow in particular as that is the biggest population centre.”
The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked about the impact of rural isolation on these figures.
Mr Allen said: “There is definitely an element of that. There has been lots of reporting on rural areas and the isolation of rural areas.
“There are issues certainly in the farming community, particularly hill farmers, the financial difficulties and lack of support.”
He spoke on the work being done, saying: “I pull together the various local authorities, health, courts, the probation service, and suicide is one of the agenda items that we discuss.
“It is difficult because there is no one cause. Some of it may be deprivation, despair, third, fourth generation unemployed, some of it may be rural isolation.
“Some of the health outcomes in Barrow are way worse than the national average because of deprivation and poverty and things like that.
“You will not live as long in Barrow as you do in some parts of the country, because of poverty and deprivation.”
He added: “A lot of it is linked to self-worth, places like Barrow, though that’s changing, and west Cumbria, these were places that had full employment, you followed your dad down the pit or into the steel works, or Vickers or BAE.
“Men in particular get their self-worth from what they do, rather than what they are. I was a builder, I was a joiner, I was a steel worker, rather than self-worth for being your own person.”
He described it as an ’emergency for Cumbria’, adding we ‘need to be dealing with it’.
Mr Allen added: “Data collection is the first part, we are working with the coroner on that. Secondly is working with health and other services to work out how to stop it, how do you improve people’s health outcomes, how do you invest resources into preventing suicides that will work.
“The police are part of that, we’re not the agency that will stop it. But by the same token, I’ve been to suicides when I was a young cop, it’s really awful.
“You go to a suicide, their family are devastated and all of the community around them. If you’re going to these as a young cop it really does affect you.”
He said, therefore, suicide prevention also helps the wellbeing of officers, enabling them to concentrate on other work.
“But actually it is the right thing to do, because young men in particular should not be taking their own lives in Cumbria,” Mr Allen added, “We need to improve employment, health and reduce isolation. Just give them reasons to live and thrive – it sounds really simple but is actually really difficult to do.”
He believes things in Barrow would improve with the investment coming into the town.
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