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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.