Over 1k ‘suicide’ and ‘overdose’ 999 calls

A leading suicide prevention worker in the city said the new data, whilst an apparent spike on previous years, was sadly not surprising.

Today the Sentinel reveals that ambulances attended an unbelievable 1,018 call-outs in 2011 in the city where the chief complaint was either ‘overdose/poisoning (ingestion)’ or ‘psychiatric/abnormal behaviour/suicide attempts.’

Assuming no-one under the age of 10 tried to kill themselves in 2011 the per capita figure was one episode for every 92 people living in Londonderry.

Conor McCafferty, a therapist and mentoring co-ordinator at ZEST, a charity supporting people in Londonderry suffering from emotional pain and hurt, said he was not surprised at the level of ambulance call-outs.

The 1,018 ambulance call-outs in 2011 in Londonderry alone compared with 978 presentations at Altnagelvin A&E in 2010 by people who had deliberately self-harmed in 2010, although the new figures include paramedics attending accidental overdoses and psychiatric 999 calls that did not involve suicide attempts.

When the figures for the whole of the Western area are taken into account the increase is startling - there were over 2000 ambulance call-outs in the Londonderry, Limavady, Strabane, Omagh and Enniskillen areas in 2011 compared with 1,402 presentations at A&Es in 2010.

Explaining the figures the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) said it does not have a chief complaint that relates to ‘suicide calls’ only and suicide is included in an aggregated field coded as ‘psychiatric/abnormal behaviour/suicide attempts.’

NIAS warned that it cannot clearly identify suicide calls or confirm whether the act of taking one’s own life voluntarily or intentionally was achieved.

It said the data include 999 call-outs to ‘psychiatric/abnormal behaviour’ episodes which may not have been suicide attempts.

The Ambulance Service also provided data on the chief complaint of ‘overdose/poisoning’ as it may be that depending on the information provided at the time of receiving the 999 call a ‘suicide’ type related call may have been coded as this definition although again the service was unable to say whether these acts were intentional or accidental.

But the figures do suggest an increase in the problem of suicide and self-harm in an area where the problem has been traditionally more acute than anywhere else.

In 2010 for example, there were 1,402 self-harm presentations to the Altnagelvin, Omagh and Enniskillen A&Es - 10.7 per cent higher than 2009, 6 per cent higher than 2008 and 2.4 per cent higher than 2007.

Now the Sentinel can reveal over 2,000 ambulance call-outs for suicide attempts, overdoses and psychiatric 999 calls in 2011.

Mr McCafferty said: “It doesn’t tell you if the people who have overdosed are people who have tried to take their own lives or if they have self-harmed and it doesn’t take account of repeats - roughly 15-20 per cent are generally repeat episodes - but you’ll still be talking about 800 people. It’s still very high.”

He said the problem of suicide and self-harm is particularly marked in Londonderry.

“The figures for Derry are the highest outside Belfast. The figures for Belfast are atrocious.”

The ZEST mentor said he was not surprised by the figures, however, as the Northern Ireland Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm has regularly identified Londonderry as one of the worst affected areas in both the UK and the island as a whole.

Three years ago Mr Mccafferty warned statistics massively underestimated the true extent of the problem with large numbers of self-harmers unlikely to officially report to the health service.

Asked why the problem seems so entrenched in the North West Mr McCafferty suggested alcohol misuse - intoxication as opposed to chronic addiction - was one possible factor.

Alcohol, although rare as a main form of self harm, has featured as a major factor in self-harm and suicide episodes in Londonderry since 2007 and is involved in roughly 60 per cent of all episodes.

“The Western Trust has the highest rate of alcohol to self-harm in the whole of the UK and Ireland,” said Mr McCafferty. “It’s not about people having a drink problem; it’s intoxication.”

He said people who are drunk graduate through natural stages of intoxication brought about by the chemical ethanol and unfortunately may self-harm as a result.

“We meet people who have been in hospital and they say afterwards: ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’ Other people don’t remember because they’ve suffered from a blackout,” he said.

Another factor Mr McCafferty believes could be contributing to the high suicide and self-harm rate in Londonderry is the perennial difficulty men experience in expressing their feelings.

“Men are four times more likely to their own lives,” he said. “Expressing feelings and nor keeping them bottled up is real issue and it’s not uncommon here.

“It is certainly one of the core issues.”

The ZEST organisation exists to address the problems which lead to suicidal behaviour and direct and/or indirect self-harm in young people and adults.

Contact ZEST at: 15a Queen Street, L’derry, BT48 7EQ; Tel. No: 028 71 266 999; email: [email protected]; website: www.zestni.org.

Or call 08457 90 90 90 (UK) or 1850 60 90 90 (ROI) for the number of the Samaritans closest to you.