Suicide and Mental Health of Young People: Tatton

Opened the debate

I am concerned about the risks associated with withdrawing from SSRIs, specifically citalopram. Olivia Russell's case highlights that when she stopped taking her medication without consulting her GP, she experienced severe mental health deterioration leading to her suicide in September 2021. The Royal College of Psychiatrists suggests between a third and half of people who take antidepressant medications experience withdrawal symptoms. The pandemic lockdown exacerbated the mental health crisis, increasing reliance on SSRIs while access to medical support was limited. The closure of England's only dedicated antidepressant withdrawal helpline further worsened the situation.

Government Response

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for securing this debate and raising many important issues. My heart goes out to Olivia's family and loved ones; it is a truly heartbreaking situation and process that they have gone through. The Government has made suicide prevention and mental health a priority, especially for young people. Many of the issues raised today are symptomatic of an NHS that is broken. About 50% of lifetime mental health conditions are established by the time an individual is 14, and 75% by the time they are 24. Evidence suggests that the prevalence of mental health conditions is rising among children and young people; in 2023, 20.3% of eight to 16-year-olds had a probable disorder compared with 12.5% in 2017. The Darzi review found that 343,000 referrals for children and young people under the age of 18 are waiting for mental health services, including 109,000 referrals waiting for more than a year. Until recently, there had been an upward trend in suicide rates for children and young people; for women between the ages of 10 and 24, the rate has almost doubled since 2012, rising from 1.6 per 100,000 to 3.1 per 100,000 in 2023. The Government is committed to reforming the NHS to ensure that mental health receives the same attention and focus as physical health. We will recruit 8,500 additional mental health workers across children's and adult mental health services, introduce a specialist mental health professional in every school, roll out young futures hubs to provide timely mental health support to our children and young people, and work with NHS England and the Department for Education on delivery of these commitments. The Government is also committed to tackling suicide as one of the biggest killers in the country; 79 voluntary organisations up and down the country have been allocated funding through the Department of Health and Social Care's £10 million suicide prevention grant fund over the two years to March 2025. We are concerned about the widespread availability of harmful material online, promoting content on eating disorders, suicide and self-harm; we have been clear that our priority is the effective implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023 so that those who use social media—especially children—can benefit from its wide-ranging protections as soon in their lives as possible. The Mental Health Bill will deliver the Government's manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983 by giving patients greater choice and autonomy, enhancing rights and support, ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity and respect throughout treatment, redressing the balance of power from the system to the patient and ensuring people with severe mental health conditions get better, more personalised care. The Bill will limit the scope to detain people with a learning disability and autistic people under the Act unless they have a co-occurring mental health disorder that needs hospital treatment.