Suicide Prevention Day: Grieving dad calls for multi-agency approach

A north Belfast man who lost his son to suicide has urged policy makers, charities and local communities to collaborate, in the fight to tackle the suicide crisis in NI.

Alfie McCrory's 26-year-old son Alfred took his own life in 2009.

The grieving father said 'it destroyed' him and has worked tirelessly in the last ten years in a bid to help suicide prevention.

"Some people it destroys, it destroyed me but some people get themselves down and never get themselves up again and they end up in depression.

"I took Alfred's death as a motivation to try and help other people who wouldn't go through the same thing that I went through.

"So for the last ten years I've had a suicide prevention page, it's not a counselling page it's only a page where people will come on and... support each other."

Alfie has called for a consortium to be set up with a multi-agency approach to help people in crisis and try to reduce suicide rates in Northern Ireland.

"There is community organisations out there I have to applaud, who do a lot of good work but in my own opinion, it's a consortium that's needed, one thing is needed where everybody works out of the one office.

"There's too many groups pop up after an atrocity in an area, a new group pops up.

"If you go to any of them, there's an eight or ten week waiting list, people who are vulnerable need seen straight away, they can't go eight to ten weeks."

Northern Ireland has the highest suicide rates in the UK and in 2015 had the highest on record.

Rates are higher in deprived areas including north Belfast.

To mark World Suicide Prevention day, Alfie has called on others in distress to reach out for help:

"I just think if you take almost 4000 people in ten years, it's an epidemic.

"I would appeal to anybody who's listening to this to come to anybody they trust and speak to them, I know the old saying it's good to talk, it is good to talk because if there is help out there and you don't go looking help you can't get it."

If you or anyone you know is in distress or despair phone Lifeline on 0808 808 8000 or click here for more information