Local schemes providing places where men feel safe to talk have helped in reducing the number of suicides, but campaigners say more still needs to be done

It’s a dark January afternoon in Penicuik, Midlothian, and George arrives at the town hall. If he didn’t have a place like this nearby, where he can go to talk to someone when he’s feeling like he can’t carry on, he wonders if he would be here today. George is 54 and regularly attends the Men’s Suicide, Harm, Awareness, Recovery and Empathy (Share) project, set up in 2009. The project provides group and one-to-one support, as well as financial and practical advice, and activities like cards and football. “It’s somewhere I feel safe just talking things out”, says George, who has made several suicide attempts since he was made homeless three years ago. “I’m in that grey area. If I’m feeling really low, I don’t want to call a helpline and talk to someone I don’t know, but I don’t want to go to the doctor and be given medication either. Here, I know everyone – and I know that everyone understands.”

Share is open seven days a week. “From the moment someone comes through the door,” says the project coordinator, John Murphy, “we give them a platform to be heard in a way they think matters, offering social and emotional support. By considering practical solutions we are able to deflect away from the ‘perfect storm’ – where emotional distresses cross with circumstances to create an environment where suicide becomes an option.”

Everyone who ever feels like I do needs somewhere like this

Murphy says demand is up. “About 60 men can be using the project at any one time, with numbers growing of late,” he says. “I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there’s a backdrop of more austerity creating further pressures.”

In the last decade, thanks in part to projects like this, Scotland has reduced the number of men killing themselves. In 2000, suicide rates for men were both considerably higher than the rest of the UK (31.2 deaths from suicide per 100,000 population compared with 16.9 in England, 20.6 in Wales and 18.6 in Northern Ireland) and higher than the rate for women (8.6 per 100,000). With overall suicide rates also much higher than the rest of the UK, in 2002 the Scottish executive embarked on a 10-year suicide prevention strategy, Choose Life, which targeted those groups most at risk: young people, people with mental health problems, those with a record of self-harm, drug-users and prisoners. A coordinator has been hired in all 32 local council areas in Scotland to identify and help these groups, working with health and social care, education, housing, policing and employment services. It also funded multi-professional training in suicide prevention and support for local initiatives like Share, some of which are aimed specifically at men.

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The approach appears to have had partial success. According to the Scottish Public Health Observatory, between 2000-02 and 2011-13, there was a 21% fall in male suicide rates (14% for women). This compares with a 39% increase in Northern Ireland and a much smaller reduction, of 6%, in England. Only Wales managed a bigger – 25% – reduction in male suicide.

Rory O’Connor, of the suicidal behaviour research laboratory at the University of Glasgow, feels proud of what has happened in this period and says that the World Health Organisation’s preventing suicide report of 2014 hailed Scotland’s coordinated approach as an example.

But despite the substantial fall in the male suicide rate in Scotland, latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2014, it was still significantly higher than in England at 20.2 per 100,000 compared with 16 per 100,000. Jane Powell, chief executive of the Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), a charity dedicated to preventing male suicide in the UK, argues that innovative local projects like Share, which is funded by Choose Life, aren’t enough and that more needs to be done on a national level. “At what point do we take this issue seriously?” she asks. “To a degree, the Scottish government has: they have put money into it, and there is a result. But rates are still too high. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.”

“This is a major health issue: we can’t just offload it on to local initiatives and the voluntary sector. We need to have a grown-up solution here – an overarching national suicide prevention strategy that takes male suicide seriously. And the idea that men won’t seek help is wrong – they are desperate for help.”

Murphy agrees: “Certainly, Scottish ‘macho’ culture has prevented men from coming forward but it’s more about not knowing who to speak to and not wishing to be a burden than not actually wanting to talk. Our project has proved that given the right environment, effective listeners and the recognition that they may be unique, but they are not alone, men will talk – and feel a lot better for having done so.”

Back in Penicuik, Ged, 44, is the last to arrive. He is close to tears just talking. “That’s how I get sometimes. I’ve been like this since I was a kid, always up and down, anxiety, depression. I used to pretend I was out playing and just sit in my room. But when I feel like there’s no point in going on, this place is here. Nobody’s going to say to me, ‘Gie yerself a shake’. Everyone who ever feels like I do needs somewhere like this.”

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.