STITCH HIT's work highlighted in National Suicide Prevention Strategy progress report

The work of the Improving Care in Self-Harm Health Integration Team (STITCH HIT) has been recognised in the Department of Health’s third National Suicide Prevention Strategy progress report.

STITCH is highlighted as a case study on page 21 of the report, which details the activity that has taken place across England to reduce deaths by suicide in the year ending March 2016.

Salena Williams, STITCH co-Director and Senior Nurse in Liaison Psychiatry at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, said:

“It’s fantastic to see the government are recognising self-harm, its close relationship to suicide, and the need for the best care for self-harm patients, in this report. We not only feel proud that STITCH’s work is being recognised at a national level, but it is also a vindication of our continued efforts to improve liaison psychiatry, continue local monitoring of self-harm, reduce stigma and improve care pathways for all people who self-harm across Bristol and beyond.”

This report is being used to update the 2012 strategy in five main areas:

• expanding the strategy to include self-harm prevention in its own right
• every local area to produce a multi-agency suicide prevention plan
• improving suicide bereavement support in order to develop support services
• better targeting of suicide prevention and help seeking in high risk groups
• improve data at both the national and local levels

These updates will help to meet the recommendations of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health relevant to suicide prevention: to reduce the number of suicides by 10 per cent by the year ending March 2021 and for every local area to have a multi-agency suicide prevention plan in place by the end of 2017.

The team’s work was also discussed in the House of Commons by Kerry McCarthy MP and Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health, who had visited the team during 2016. Watch the clip here.