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Two mothers whose sons took their own lives are joining forces to pile pressure on the Government to ban websites selling ‘death in a bag’ suicide kits.

Patti Boyle, 54, of Purley, and Joanna Lane, 64, of Coulsdon, will march on Westminster today armed with a petition to demand ministers shut down websites “earning money from the death of our children”.

Find the full story at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/13/jacintha-saldanha-samaritans-reporting-guidelines

The Samaritans Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide are a useful resource for all responsible journalists.

The Department of Health launched its latest Suicide Prevention Strategy on 10th September 2012. Many TASC members have been intimately involved in the consultation process. Only time will tell whether the recommendations made will be implemented at a local level but TASC will be pushing hard to see that the ideas this document sets out are put into practice.

More than 1,000 people in the UK may have killed themselves because of the impact on their lives of the economic recession, according to a new analysis. Suicides tend to rise in hard economic times, and there has been evidence of the numbers increasing in Greece and more recently in Italy as people have lost their jobs and struggled to support themselves and their families. 

The Department of Health has launched a new cross-government strategy ‘Preventing suicide in England‘ on World Suicide Prevention Day. The new strategy has been informed by a consultation on the draft suicide prevention strategyin 2011 and TASC was involved in the important consultation process.

Some of TASC’s core members are trust and memorial funds which raise money to put towards projects tackling suicide and depression. Therefore if an important project or organisation requires funding these members will consider whether they are able to help.

For example: The Survivors of Bereavement By Suicide (SOBS) is an almost entirely volunteer run organisation which supports those who have been bereaved by suicide.

The coroners’ service in England and Wales, which oversees the investigation of sudden, unexpected, violent or unnatural deaths including suicides, is currently undergoing its first process of major reform in over 100 years with a new legislative framework and the appointment of a new post of Chief Coroner, Judge Peter Thornton QC on 17 September 2012.

In July 2011, following a successful cross-organisation meeting at Guildford, the Guildford Consensus was published aimed at collecting together the current thinking about reducing suicide rates in the UK.

The group responsible for discussing priorities for the implementation of optimal strategies for the training of professionals remarked that there was an absence of training pertaining to suicide prevention.