A shift in law that will change suicide statistics

SIR – The decision by the Appeal Court earlier this month to change the standard of proof required to enable coroners to record suicide verdicts will have important implications.

In my area of work with child and adolescent mental health, coroners have followed previous guidance that used the criminal test of certainty that a young person intended to kill themselves. This usually meant evidence provided by a suicide note, or a history of repeated attempts.

However, coroners also used discretion to spare the feelings of already highly distressed parents or carers who would otherwise have endured even more pain in their grief and carried the stigma of suicide

– even though the circumstances warranted a suicide verdict. This had the effect of disguising the real level of suicides among young people in Britain, which is already one of the highest in Europe.

In the next few years we may therefore expect to see quite dramatic increases in the reported rate of youth suicide, but this will only be because of the new standard of proof, which has been lowered to the civil court definition of “the balance of probabilities”.

Hopefully, this will have the effect of prompting more investment in preventative child and adolescent mental health services, which have been severely cut back in recent years. Steven Walker

Former head of child and adolescent mental health, Anglia Ruskin University Walton-on-the-naze, Essex