National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group (NSPLG): third annual report

The year ahead

• We are grateful to local suicide prevention leads across Scotland who have been instrumental in developing initiatives such as our local suicide prevention action planning guidance, and the roll-out of more timely data, highlighting the importance of local knowledge and relationships. Over the coming year we will focus on aligning local and national suicide prevention work to ensure that they are mutually supportive, including through a regionalised approach to suicide prevention.

• Our United to Prevent Suicide social movement has continued to grow with the recent launch of FC United to Prevent Suicide, a campaign developed to harness the reach of football. This is the first of the focused public awareness campaigns we will launch to engage specific groups.

• We will finalise governance and support arrangements that enable processes for the local review of all deaths by suicide to be piloted, initially in specific areas.

• We will recruit members for (and launch) our new Youth Advisory Group which will be made up of young people (16–26) who have experience of suicide, self-harm or poor mental health.

• We look forward to working with the Scottish Government, COSLA and our partners in the year ahead to see the recommendations in our Time, Space, and Compassion report embedded across suicide prevention and other services.

• We will work with Samaritans Scotland and other key partners to focus on locations of concern, supporting implementation of our COVID-19 Statement recommendation on reducing access to the means of suicide.