It's Mental Health Awareness Week, which means it's time to focus on the stories of people who have struggled with mental health problems in our communities.

Running from May 18-24, this week is intended to inspire action to promote the message of good mental health for all.

In raising awareness of mental health on Merseyside, we chose to share a piece that focuses on just one aspect of the crisis currently facing our region - male suicide.

Data produced by the Samaritans shows men are three times as likely to die by suicide than women.

Back in 2018, reporter Emilia Bona spoke to the bereaved families left living in the wake of a loved one's suicide, as well as the survivors who came out the other side.

“Even as a baby he was always funny - he always had me laughing. He was my eldest, he was my first.”

When Joanne talks about her son Daniel, you can hear her filling up with pride as she describes his cheeky sense of humour, his flair for art and design and his caring, kind nature.

She knew Daniel was struggling with his mental health - he was prone to long spells spent locked in his room, playing computer games all night and sleeping all day. He had been hospitalised before after an attempt to take his own life.

Even though she knew Daniel was suffering with depression and had tried in the past to get him help, Joanne never truly believed he would kill himself.

But one night in October 2016, 21-year-old Daniel Blundell came downstairs while his family were making dinner and took two cans of lager up to his bedroom. He came back downstairs 10 minutes later, obviously in a mood, to return the empty cans.

Joanne sent her daughter upstairs to shout Daniel for dinner, but she came back down saying he wouldn’t answer her - he was just sat in his wardrobe with the lights off. To this day, Joanne thanks god that her daughter didn’t go inside, turn on the lights and see her brother lying inside.

Joanne Blundell is one of countless mothers who lost her son to suicide - the single biggest killer of young men in the UK.

Whether it’s bottling up suicidal thoughts, failing to reach out and ask for help, or falling between the cracks of a desperately stretched health service - Liverpool’s male suicide crisis is killing sons, fathers and husbands at an alarming rate.

We spoke to the families who had their lives torn apart by suicide, the men who tried to take their own lives, and the healthcare experts trying to tackle the crisis to try and understand the scale of the problem - and what we can do to try and solve it.

‘ I just wish he’d realised how many people loved him’ - losing a loved one to suicide

It’s been nearly two years since Daniel’s death, and Joanne said it’s been ‘slow-going’ as she and her family try to rebuild their lives around the loss of her eldest child.

Joanne is a 46-year-old administrator for Next. She lives in Speke with her husband and her daughter.

Speaking about the weeks leading up to Daniel’s death, Joanne says she believed her son was actually “turning a corner”. After years of being effectively housebound, he suddenly seemed full of hope for the future - he was going out again, seeing his friends, looking for work.

She said: “I knew he was struggling, that he had issues, but he would never go and speak to people. I think that’s the problem with boys - they hold it all in, they won’t speak to people, they don’t want to admit that they are struggling but I could see it in him and I was helpless really to do anything.

“The strange thing is in the six weeks before he died he seemed to be turning a corner. After being pretty much housebound for two years and locking himself in his room playing his games all night and sleeping all day, he started going out, he applied for Universal Credit, he had been set up with work experience which he was about to start, he went out with his friends. I felt as if I let my guard down.

“Six weeks later he was at home with us and we all witnessed it. My daughter was almost the one to find him in his room.

“He had come downstairs - we were just doing the tea, we were having a late tea and we said to him, ‘are you going to have some tea’, but he was in a mood that day. We said ‘what’s the matter’ and he said nothing.

“He went upstairs, [and] took two cans of lager with him, which I thought was odd because he was not a drinker. But then he came down 10 minutes later and I thought something was up but he still wouldn’t talk.

“I sent my daughter up to say tea was ready and she came down and said he wouldn’t answer her. She said he was just sitting in his wardrobe and wouldn’t answer her. Thank god she didn’t turn the light on. My husband turned the light on and realised what he had done.

“It has been awful ever since. Even though he was struggling and I knew, it was in the back of my mind whether he would try and do that, but once it happened it was still a shock.

“People have said to me that sometimes once they’ve made that decision they will brighten up because it’s like they’re at peace with themselves. To me it felt that he was making an effort.”

Since losing Daniel, Joanne has spent the last two years going back over every missed opportunity for an intervention - she has spent a lot of time blaming herself for not getting him help.

She tried. She took him to a doctor where he was prescribed anti-depressants, but he didn’t like how they made him feel. After an earlier suicide attempt she urged him to seek counselling through CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), but he wouldn’t go. Daniel was 21 years old, and in the eyes of the law and medical professionals, he was an adult. Joanne couldn’t force him.

Joanne couldn’t get her son the help he needed - and since his death she’s found strength in other bereaved families, who all have hauntingly similar stories. She attends monthly SOBS (Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide) meetings, where she has met other people with the same tragic story.

She said: “I feel like there’s not really enough out there. I know from being in the SOBS group, one of the things for me when we first lost him was this massive guilt of wondering - why didn’t I do more to get him help?

“For me and my husband, I felt like I had let him down, failed him, and not got him support. We did try - but listening to other people who sat in A&E when their kids were on the verge of doing it for hours and hours... for men there should be services that are targeted and done in a way that will make them want to go.”

'Men don't talk' - when there are no warning signs

But sometimes there are no warning signs, no opportunities for intervention and no slipping between the cracks. In many cases it comes down to an unwillingness and inability to speak about mental health and suicidal ideation.

Men are far less likely to reach out and ask for help. While women in general are more likely to engage with healthcare services, men are at risk of suffering in silence.

For Lisa Vint, 49, there were no red flags or warning signs that suggested her husband Peter would take his own life on April 26, 2017.

The couple met at a caravan park in Rhyl when Lisa was just 15. They were together for 33 years and married for 23. They grew up together, raised a family and fostered children.

Lisa, who lives in Knowsley and works for Liverpool Council, said her husband wasn’t known to mental health services - but one day she came home from work to find he had hanged himself. She didn’t know he was struggling.

Looking back, she fears the trigger for Peter’s death was the end of a long-term foster placement which caused him a huge sense of loss. They were both struggling to come to terms with things, but on the outside he seemed fine.

She said: “He went to the gym, he was very sociable, was the life and soul - always laughing, always making people laugh.

“He made one comment the week before along the lines of saying he may have been depressed. It was in the past tense he said it was just not wanting to do stuff.”

Peter didn’t talk about how he was feeling - and Lisa thinks a tendency to bottle things up and put on a brave face is a major factor in Liverpool’s male suicide crisis.

She said: “I know from people who have tried to access mental health services that it can be hard to try and get the right help. Men don’t talk - it’s a big problem.

“What I struggled with, and people that know Peter knew, is that as a foster carer he always said I can’t help you if you don’t talk about it - and then he didn’t talk about it himself.”

‘Services are stretched, they slip through the cracks’ - fighting the male suicide crisis

Trying to navigate the health service and access the right mental health care can be a minefield.

Service provision can be patchy, hard to access or restricted by strict criteria. Combined with a health service that is stretched to breaking point and it can sometimes feel impossible to access the right help at the right time.

Dr Pooja Saini is a lecturer in psychology at John Moores University specialising in suicide and self-harm. Her research focuses on people who had been in touch with mental health services in the years before death.

She found that many people who took their own lives had spoken about suicidal ideation (45%) or visited their GP for any health matter in the six months prior to death (91%).

For men who are presenting in front of clinicians and talking about suicidal thoughts and feelings, the problem comes down to a lack of accessible help available.

Dr Saini, 39, said: “People are asking for help - not everyone is - but for those who do, there isn’t help available - either because they don’t meet the criteria or because that help isn’t available. They slip through the cracks.”

She added: “People feel they are not worthy of being in A&E because they are physically fine. With primary care the impression I get is that people are voicing their concerns to GPs but there’s not enough support. Services have got ridiculously long waiting lists - like 12-18 months.”

Mental health support Helplines and support groups The NHS Choices website lists the following helplines and support networks for people to talk to. Samaritans (116 123) operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year. If you prefer to write down how you're feeling, or if you're worried about being overheard on the phone, you can email Samaritans at jo@samaritans.org.

Childline (0800 1111) runs a helpline for children and young people in the UK. Calls are free and the number won't show up on your phone bill.

PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) is an organisation supporting teenagers and young adults who are feeling suicidal.

Mind (0300 123 3393) is a charity based in England providing advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. They campaign to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding.

Students Against Depression is a website for students who are depressed, have a low mood or are having suicidal thoughts.

Bullying UK is a website for both children and adults affected by bullying.

Young Persons Advisory Service – Providing mental health and emotional wellbeing services for Liverpool’s children, young people and families. tel: 0151 707 1025 email: support@ypas.org.uk

The NHS IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) programme does not cover people who are actively self-harming or suicidal, who do not fall within their remit, while community mental health teams deal with long standing mental health issues like schizophrenia and psychosis.

A picture quickly starts to form of a number of different services who all find a patient does not meet their criteria. These are the people who can slip through the net because different services don’t cover them.

This means that even when men do reach out and contact healthcare services, they aren’t getting the help they need because it’s either unavailable or inaccessible.

Dr Saini said: “For high-functioning young men who present themselves well, people might not think they are in crisis because they are seemingly together. It’s so hard to get men to access services, so when a man is in front of you telling you they’re suicidal and feeling down, that’s a red flag you need to pay attention to. Even if there’s no history.

“Then there’s recurring cases too. Sometimes people can access all the services, all the help, but it can make no difference. Services are really stretched.”

So what is the answer? Dr Saini feels the solution lies in more community level facilities for men to access that are not medicalised. One initiative like this she has been involved in is James’ Place - a centre based in Liverpool’s Georgian Quarter which aims to help men who are in crisis, whether it’s for one session or sustained counselling.

Another Liverpool-grown initiative which is helping men across the country find services to help them in times of crisis is the Hub of Hope - started by Jake Mills after he tried to take his own life.

‘I’m still here’ - surviving suicide

Jake Mills is funny, engaging and incredibly easy to talk to - the kind of person you instantly feel at ease with. He’s the perfect example of why you can never tell what battles someone is hiding beneath the surface.

In 2013 Jake was trying to make it as a comedian, forging a career and secretly living with an all-consuming depression that drove him to try and take his own life.

He never had any history of mental ill health and came from a loving, close family - but when he started struggling he didn’t turn to those around him because he didn’t realise that what he was experiencing was depression - or that there was help out there.

Jake said: “I can’t say exactly when or why but I became depressed - but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know that the feelings I was feeling were not being well.

“I didn’t know it was completely normal or common - I didn’t know I could seek help and get medication. I thought the way I was feeling was just being an adult.

“I thought that was just what life was like. That’s probably the main reason I didn’t see anyone or seek help because I didn’t know it was a thing.

“I kept it to myself, bottled it up, and it become something a lot more serious. I became a really good liar, a really good actor. I was lying to everyone.

“My parents of my girlfriend knew something was wrong and the more they asked if they could help the worse it made me feel because I didn’t know that they could help. It pushed me further and further away.”

Despite trying anti-depressants and accessing counselling, Jake couldn’t feel himself getting any better. He started lying to his counsellor too, and was discharged after seemingly making a ‘great recovery’.

He said: “At that stage my understanding was you get two options - a counsellor or medication and I had done both. I thought either I live like this forever or I do something.

“This one day after living for months without a clear thought I got this moment of clarity which was very clear and the thought said to kill myself. I was made up that I had found an answer... but I’m still here.

“People say it’s selfish but I did think of my family and my girlfriend but they were the reason I was doing it. In that place where I was I believed that the best thing I could do is take myself out of the equation.”

Jake texted his girlfriend Rachael, who is now his wife, to tell her he loved her, drove his car to a random street and tried to cut his wrists with a CD. Rachael found him before it was too late, and after taking the time to recover following his suicide attempt, Jake decided to share his story online - in a series of Tweets that saw his story go around the world.

After sharing his story, Jake became a point of contact for other people experiencing suicidal crisis. He’s walked out of family events and put everything aside to literally talk people out of taking their own lives.

Jake, now a dad-of-one to son Teddy, decided to take his experiences and try and turn them into a force for good by founding his own charity Chasing the Stigma and setting up the Hub of Hope, a national mental health database which brings help and support together in one place.

Helplines and support groups

The NHS Choices website lists the following helplines and support networks for people to talk to.