Grieving families delivered a powerful message to Downing Street to tackle the biggest killer of young people in the UK.
They want action to prevent 17 people dying by suicide every day.
Among them was Ross McCarthy, who went to his GP with severe depression and was put on a six-month waiting list for therapy. He died by suicide two weeks later, aged 31, leaving a fiancee and three-year-old son behind.
In a heartbreaking final note to his family, he begged: “Please fight for mental health. The support is just not there.”
Ross’s sudden death in 2021 left his dad Mike devastated, but he is determined to honour his son’s final wish and fight for better support.
He joined forces with other bereaved families to mount Britain’s largest ever suicide awareness campaign, Baton of Hope, urging lawmakers to prioritise mental health care.
Over a month, the Baton – made by a goldsmith and silversmith to the late Queen Elizabeth II – has been carried around 12 cities across the UK by families bereaved by suicide.
It was delivered to Downing Street yesterday by Nickie Aiken, Tory MP for Westminster, along with Dr Alex George, the UK Youth Mental Health Ambassador, Wales midfielder Will Vaulks, Norman Cook, aka DJ Fatboy Slim, and the GB Olympic eventing team.
Mike said: “The significance of this event cannot be overestimated. For the first time, a physical symbol that can be passed from bearer to bearer – from sufferer to sufferer – is spreading a message that we needn’t struggle alone.”
Mike was shocked to discover suicide is the biggest killer of people under 35 in this country.
“Not drugs, not cancer, not car accidents,” he said. “Where’s the political discussion? Where’s the public discourse? Where’s the coverage?
“Suicide is a societal catastrophe that’s robbing us of an unfathomable amount of promise and potential that we are not getting to grips with.
“If you went to hospital with a fatal or potentially terminal illness, you would not be turned away for six months. Ross had what was effectively a potentially terminal illness. He had a record of mental ill health. We have to treat mental health as seriously as we treat physical health.”
Ross had suffered with severe depression for ten years and was the “highest of high risk” when he was put on a waiting list before he ended his life in February 2021.
Ross had been due to marry his fiancee Charlotte in Cyprus the previous year, but their plans were delayed due to the Covid pandemic.
The last time Mike, from Sheffield, saw his son alive was during a socially distanced visit to Ross and Charlotte’s home in Stockton on Tees, County Durham, when he seemed to have turned a corner.
“He was a great, lively, fun-loving, kind son,” said Mike, a Sky and BBC journalist of 40 years. “He was the best son a dad could have ever wished for. I struggle to find the words of what the loss means to us.”
Ross’s son Charlie is due to turn six this summer, and the weight of the grief has not got any lighter. But Mike has found pride and purpose in the final message his son left behind.
He added: “All the experts agree that suicide is preventable. The question at the core of Baton of Hope is why aren’t we preventing it. If this were a virus, we would be looking for a vaccine urgently.”
Jenny Rayner’s family also carried the Baton, ten years after she lost her daughter Lucy to suicide, aged 22.
Two weeks before she died, Lucy visited her GP to say she was struggling. Instead of referring her for mental health support, they changed her contraceptive pill.
Jenny, from Redhill, Surrey, raised money for the GP practice to pay for a counsellor – they already had one, but Lucy had not “presented” as depressed. Jenny, 59, said: “How many young people slip through the net? I had to do something.”
Jenny founded a charity in her daughter’s honour, the Lucy Rayner Foundation, which provides free counselling for hundreds in need.
She added: “No-one should die by suicide. There should always be an opportunity for someone to have hope in their life – to know that when they reach rock bottom, someone can give them a lifeline.”
