Did you know that in the UK September is a month devoted to suicide prevention? And that on the 10th of this month, it’s World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD)? No, neither did I. And neither did any of my friends. Yet we’re all aware that suicide is a serious problem. Every 90 minutes someone in the UK or Ireland dies that way. It’s the biggest killer of men under 45. And suicides among teenage girls and young women have almost doubled in recent years.

We’ve been having these suicide prevention events every September for more than two decades and yet the rates are not going down. Maybe it’s time to challenge what I’d call the suicide prevention consensus.

This is the belief that along with increased government funding for mental health, we need more ‘openness’ and ‘honesty’ around the subject. According to the mission statement from the organisers of World Suicide Prevention Day, we need to move ‘from a culture of silence and stigma to one of openness, understanding and support’.

To suggest that suicide is wrong makes some campaigners shudder in horror

To suggest that suicide is wrong makes some campaigners shudder in horror

Suicide campaigners are very keen on ‘openness’, ‘honest conversations’ and getting rid of the ‘stigma’. And who could be against that? Not me. The trouble is that our ‘open’ and ‘honest’ conversations aren’t as open and honest as they need to be. Today, the taboo topic we never talk about is the morality of suicide. In our........

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