The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has listed “common risk factors” such as physical illness, financial difficulty and social isolation in its new Suicide Prevention Strategy for England.
But it fails to include claimants of universal credit and employment and support allowance (ESA) who have been found to have limited capability for work (LCW) or work-related activity (LCWRA).
Ministers have failed to include this group despite NHS Digital’s Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey showing in 2016 that more than 43 per cent of ESA claimants had said they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives, compared with about seven per cent of non-ESA claimants.
Five years ago, the Department refused to explain why ESA claimants had not been included as a high-risk group in a cross-government suicide prevention plan, and why DHSC was refusing to warn agencies and departments that ESA claimants were at high risk of suicide.
Now it has failed again to explain its refusal to include LCW or LCWRA as a risk factor for suicide, even though the strategy insists that practice and policy on suicide prevention “should be informed by high-quality data and research”.
Dr Jay Watts, a Disabled activist and consultant clinical psychologist, praised the progress made by the new strategy in acknowledging groups such as autistic people and those “subjected to intimate partner violence” as priority groups for the first time.
But she said the strategy also appeared “strategically crafted to insulate the government from the harsh consequences of its own policies”.
She said: “The strategy recognises financial difficulty as a risk factor yet fails to make the direct link to welfare reforms that have significantly impacted claimants since austerity measures began – reforms that are well-documented for increasing suicide risk.”
She added: “Five years ago, we urgently flagged the need for ESA claimants to be recognized as a high-risk group in our national suicide prevention approach.
“This was based on a crucial finding that corroborated what activists had been telling and showing us for years and was rooted in irrefutable evidence from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS).
“Given the APMS’s stature among researchers, it’s startling that the new Suicide Prevention Strategy itself overtly highlights the survey as a crucial future data source, but simultaneously overlooks its shocking revelation that 43 per cent of ESA claimants have attempted suicide.
“This is in stark contrast to the less than seven per cent of other adults – a disparity that’s more pronounced than for most other groups highlighted as high-risk in the strategy, denying claimants yet again the recognition and targeted help so desperately needed.”
Dr. Watts said it was hard not to conclude that the failure to include the LCW/LCWRA group as high-risk was a “deliberate attempt to deflect from the repercussions of governmental policies”, when DWP’s actions show “show tacit acknowledgment of a problem”.
Source and for more information see Ministers ignore ESA claimants in suicide prevention strategy… again available from www.disabilitynewsservice.com