My dad died of silent killer - 32 years on we still don't talk enough about it
EXCLUSIVE: Jenny Wooldridge says the UK has not 'changed the dial' about suicide enough in the 32 years since her dad killed himself.
A mental health campaigner whose dad killed himself when she was in her early-20s says we still have not “changed the dial” enough around suicide.
Suicide rates in England and Wales are now at their highest in over 20 years and one-in-five people will experience suicidal thoughts in their lifetime.
And suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) says that every day in the UK 18 people lose their lives by suicide.
Jenny Wooldridge’s dad Brian was one of those people back in June 1992. And, 32 years on, she says that the UK still isn’t talking about suicide in the way it should be to prevent deaths.
Mrs Wooldridge, from Bristol, said: “When it first happened I didn't talk about it because you're always worried about saying the wrong thing, and also people freak out, and also you don’t want to burden people with your own story."
She added: “When I talk about it people want to apologize and that's lovely but it's like I'm telling you, because I want this to be a positive story.
“I'm not telling you to feel sorry for me, I want this to be positive, and because of my sort of trajectory through life, years ago, when my dad died, you know, people didn't talk about it at all.
“You come back a sort of a decade later and it's like, statistically, this has still not changed from when my dad died. Then you come back 32 years later and you're still reading that it's the biggest killer of men under 50.
“It's still the biggest cause of death for young adults, and you think, so where are we on the scale of changing the dial?
“My dad always said to me, if you can change one person's life it's worth it. So when I got involved with Calm, it was, I think, if one person, if I can just make one person ring the Calm hotline then that, that will be worth it for my dad.”
Speaking on World Mental Health Day, the 53-year-old says that by the time she’s 80 she wants people to be able to talk about suicide and mental health as freely as they do about cancer.
She added: “My mum still struggles talking about it, because of the stigma about suicide, whereas I definitely made an active choice with my youth work and with my community work to talk about it.
“I have children now and they know how their grandpa died. He was part of such a huge part of my life, and I want that to live on.
“He was a good man who would not have been the person you would have looked at and gone, oh, yeah, that's going to happen to you.
“I think that's the key. It's like the after event, when you see these endless reports of young people who take their own life, or a 50-year-old who takes their own life, and you think, we didn't know, and it's like, well, no, you don't, you don't know.”
Mrs Wooldridge’s dad would have been 90 years old this year so to mark the occasion she is doing three fundraising runs to raise money for Calm.
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All the money she raises will go towards the charity’s work in preventing suicide, which includes a hotline and online resources.
She added: “I think with my dad, I'm so desperate for his death to mean something to others.
“That was the end for him, but if you can, if you have the tools. This is why CALM's so great, because they have resources that help you talk, and they have ways of accessing it, that are easy like through running, and through music, and through, you know, normal things.
“The tools on the CALM website are so phenomenal. I don’t know if I mean ‘normalise it’ but it makes it accessible.”
And funds from the latest Omaze Million Pound House Draw will go to CALM – with a home in Devon worth more than £2m up for grabs, along with £250,000 in cash. Draw entries are available at https://omaze.co.uk/pages/devon-iii and close at midnight on October 27.
Support from CALM is available on its Calmzone website and also by calling its helpline on 0800 585858.
The Samaritans can be reached round the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you need a response immediately, it’s best to call them on the phone. You can reach them by calling 116 123, by emailing jo@samaritans.org or by visiting www.samaritans.org.
