World Suicide Prevention Day: A Harrogate mum's story

Harrogate mum, Pat Sowa, is using her own experience as a way to educate others about suicide. Her son, Dom, took his own life in 2017 when he was just 17 years old.

Dom had been under the care of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), which is an NHS service that assesses and treats young people with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties.

Mrs Sowa is sharing her story as today is World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD), which is hosted by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Mrs Sowa, said: "We knew he'd been struggling, but we never imagined he'd feel suicidal. We didn't know the signs to look for and we didn't know how to ask. These are all things I've learnt since I wish every parent knew.

"I find myself in a situation nobody wants to imagine themselves in. It's always very complicated why people die by suicide; there's no one reason."

"As a mum, it's absolutely heartbreaking for me and part of trying to make sense of that is trying to learn more about suicide prevention."

Mrs Sowa is now working with the North Yorkshire County Council to make sure people know how to spot the signs that someone is struggling.

She said: "They're starting to do some training in the communities with suicide prevention and basic mental health awareness training so that gradually everyone will have a better understand and language around talking about suicide and then when we have that everyone will be safer."

"He was a fairly typical teenager, but I always say it's like the game Buckeroo. If you keep loading everything onto the mule in Buckeroo, eventually it will buck and I think that's what happened to Dom."

When Dom died, Mrs Sowa was put in contact with a Harrogate organisation called the Ostrich Foundation. The charity's founder also lost her son to suicide.

Elaine Weston is one of the trustees at the Ostrich Foundation. She said: "Our aim is to make Harrogate a safer place, where we reduce the stigma around suicide but also raise awareness.

"As part of our raising awareness, we particularly want to educate teachers. So we paid to send a number of teachers from Harrogate Grammar School to attend specialist, mental health and suicide awareness courses so they're able to spot the signs and offer support to pupils."

Elaine added: "People make the assumption that if you ask someone about suicidal thoughts it's going to make them suicidal but that's not the case. By actually addressing that it'll save lives as most people want to talk about it but don't know how."

National figures published by the Office of National Statistics on 1 September 2020 show that Yorkshire and the Humber region had the highest suicide rate in England at 12 suicides per 100,00 population over a 3-year period between 2017 and 2019. In West Yorkshire and Harrogate, there has been an increase from 10.6 per 100,000 between 2016-18 to 11.88 between 2017 and 2019.

Rob Webster, CEO for South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation Trust and CEO Lead for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership, said: “It’s really important that we all do what we can to support people who may be feeling hopeless or helpless, especially in these worrying times. World Suicide Prevention Day is an opportunity to do this as it aims to inspire people to challenge their beliefs about mental illness and to be more open in their attitudes and behaviour."

If you're in need of support, you can contact the following organisations:

Papyrus: Provides confidential support and advice to young people and provide a safe space to talk through anything happening in your life. Ring the HOPELINE 0800 068 41 41.

Time to Change is a growing movement of people changing how we all think and act about mental health problems.

Zero Suicide Alliance ‘Save a life’ training course online - it only takes 20 minutes and could save someone’s life.

To talk to someone about how you’re feeling, call the 24-hour mental health helpline on 0800 183 0558.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate suicide bereavement helpline: 0113 305 5800.