What can we do about taboo? Keeping mental health and suicide in the dark is killing young people

Taboo condemns us to ignorance and to repeat our failures through a lack of understanding. Photograph: On Mute by Katie Tegtmeyer on Flickr (License) (Cropped)

It is the mark of a free society that it tackles difficult questions openly. It braves the scrutiny of public debate for those matters that might otherwise have been hidden and emerges the wiser for it.

The closed and stifling world of taboo, by contrast, keeps uncomfortable matters closeted away, where it can ignore them. In doing so, however, there comes the greater risk of not understanding them.

In few areas is this more damaging than when it comes mental health. The stigma and discrimination, and the shame that follows, keeps mental health, and not least suicide, from being understood - preventing effective disclosure, diagnosis and treatment in the light of reason.

And this is no small matter. According to World Health Organisation numbers, by 2014, 800,000 people died by suicide each year. That is a huge number of people dying in a manner that is not widely understood, because taboo keeps it in the dark.

These taboos touch on every aspect of our lives and not least upon the lives of young people. In 2014, suicide was the second most prevalent cause of death amongst those aged 15-29 (Baker & CNN, 2014).

In the UK, the impact of suicide is even more profound. For Britain it is the number one cause of death amongst young people - in 2014, 1,556 young people under the age of 35 ended their lives. Even that number belies the reality.

Indeed, PAPYRUS believes these figures are the tip of the iceberg. In the UK, suicide has not been a crime since 1961, yet the law demands that coroners use the criminal standard of proof to conclude that a death was a suicide.

One of the frightening things about taboo is that, because it discourages open discussion or admission, it also hides the reality. All of this adds up, and the true number of lives lost to suicide is likely to be higher and attempts higher still.

Talking about suicide does not cause suicide and censoring discussion doesn't stop it. Rather, taboo and its inhibitions prevents what could be lifesaving communication.

The deaths of so many young people has sparked campaigns and led to the creation of organisations, like PAPYRUS in the UK, to help support young people and those close to them in order to prevent suicide.

The question is, how do we start the work of breaking up these damaging taboos?

The start comes in changing our own behaviour. By doing so, we can slowly reshape the world around us with our actions. The first step in that process is to talk.

In the UK, attitudes are clearly changing for the better. Articles pointing out the dangers of mental health taboos are appearing in popular media (Harvey-Jenner, 2016) and celebrities are taking to TV to talk personally about suicide (Ruby, 2015).

The very real momentum can also be seen gathering behind the push to put mental health on parity with physical health. Along with the advocacy of former Health minister Norman Lamb, progressive opinion has aligned with campaign (Perraudin, 2016).

The time has come for mental health to come out of the shadows. It's time for us to face the reality of suicide. Taboos only shut down reasoned debate, block discussion and understanding, and endanger lives.

If you are a young person having thoughts of suicide or if you are concerned that a young person make be at risk, please contact HopeLineUK, which is PAPYRUS’ confidential advice and support service. Call 0800 068 41 41, or Email pat@papyrus-uk.org or Text 07786 209697.

Welcome Back Westminster: Big decisions ahead for Members of Parliament

After a summer recess intended as a break from politics as usual - but which in reality turned into a carnival of political attractions - Westminster is back in session and there are some big decisions ahead.

Top of the list for progressives is human rights. With the first PMQs of the new term in sight, the Justice Secretary took it upon herself to confirm Conservative intentions towards the Human Rights Act and the UK's relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Liz Truss, newly appointed Justice Secretary announced during the break that Conservative manifesto plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights will go ahead (Stone, 2016). The plan has been widely criticised and spent a lot of time buried in the face of parliamentary opposition (Sankey, 2016) - including within Conservative ranks.

That decision goes nearly hand in hand with the decision ahead of Theresa May regarding Article 50 - which triggers the beginning of the UK's exit from the European Union. So divided are the Tories that the PM arranged a special gathering at Chequers, the PM's country retreat, to hash out a common strategy (BBC, 2016).

The product, that has been seen so far, is a refusal from Theresa May to commit to any of the Brexit campaign's promises: in particular the promises of points-based immigration and £100m a week in extra funding for the NHS (Mason, 2016). Even continuing to contribute to the EU's budget was not ruled out.

Beyond the headline issues, even just in the first week back MPs must get to grips with questions on refugee children, debate the government's budget which is at its third reading in the Commons, while the Lords tackle the Investigatory Powers Bill - the latest iteration of the so called Snooper's Charter.

Meanwhile Labour's leadership election has been seemingly fruitless and has made the attempt to oust Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership look a shambles. Owen Smith's challenge hasn't really materialised in the debates and he has been unable to set himself apart.

That is not, though, necessarily to say that there is substantial ground between the two candidates. Corbyn clearly has faults and never really set himself apart either - even in front of audiences where he enjoyed a clear majority of members' support. Yet for Smith to replace Corbyn, he has to demonstrate himself to be clearly better suited and he has so far failed.

And if, as his polling numbers of around 60% or higher suggest, Corbyn is re-elected leader in three weeks time, the divisions in the party are unlikely to have been resolved - MPs opposed to Corbyn, having failed to oust him, have more schemes planned to undermine him (Whale, 2016).

In all, the Summer seems to have been an embarrassing failure for the Labour Parliamentary Party and its disaffected MPs, and their disappointment looks likely to spill over long into the next Westminster session.

After a summer where Labour have appeared chronically unable to get their house in order, while the Tories got theirs settled almost too quickly, and with only one utterly fringe MP having a 'Brexit' mandate from voters, in a house that by overwhelming majority supported remain, UK politics is back but its actors look unready to deal with the important matters ahead.

Surely against this backdrop, a new election has to be a very real consideration. For the Left, in as difficult a position as it seems, a Progressive Alliance seems to be the only way to take the fight to the Conservatives, who look right now able to win in virtually the same manner as Theresa May became Tory leader and Prime Minister - uncontested.

Caroline Lucas, in her return to the Green Party leadership in a job share, certainly put her best foot forward in making the forming of a Progressive Alliance her number one priority (BBC, 2016{2}). While for the Greens any strategy to increase their own representation is certainly in their interest, an alliance would also help to increase the representation of diverse voices in Parliament and rally the Left opposition to mount a serious challenge to the Conservative position.

However, plans for an Left alliance are already looking to near to scuppered by Labour's inability to get beyond its need to be the single and uncontested party of progressives. The party's official stance remains firmly opposed to pluralism, with even Jeremy Corbyn ruling out a Progressive Alliance by rolling out the party's usual lines about its historic role.

Its belief in the two-party, adversarial, system, and its own special role in that system, is summed up in the slogan on its Pride banners: "Only Labour can deliver equality".

That attitude doesn't bode well for a project aiming to build a Progressive Alliance. While there has been some warming up to pluralism and proportional representation by some individual MPs or members, the Labour Party's official stance remains intransigent.

There are big decisions ahead and progressives can only really face them working together. That means respecting the desire for broader representation, finding common ground, and working across partisan boundaries - rather than trying to wrangle everyone under one programme announced with one voice.

The Left cannot be frightened of debate between plural voices. The Left is diverse and its diversity is its strength. The way ahead for the opposition in Parliament, and the wider progressive movement, is to embrace plurality and co-operation, in the name of the common good.

Around the World: Corruption, Operation Car Wash and the Rousseff Impeachment

National Congress of Brazil, in Brasilia, where now former President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in two majority votes. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped).

Dilma Rousseff has lost her battle against impeachment in Brazil, with the Senate confirming the decision of the Chamber of Deputies to expel her from the office of President (Watts & Bowater, 2016). Three-quarters of Senators voted to impeach her on charges of corruption and mismanagement of the budget.

That is unlikely to be the end of the controversy. But for now, it marks the end of a chain of events set against a backdrop of general unrest, with protests against money being spent on huge international events like the World Cup and the Olympics, instead of on practical measures to support the people - like housing and welfare - and an economy deeply affected by the global crisis.

A lot of the present crisis surrounds Brazilian oil. Accusations of bribery surrounding the state oil company Petrobras surrounding the awarding of contracts and its deep connections in Brazilian politics, was uncovered by the corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Watts, 2016).

The result has been a political crisis that has seen Rousseff's predecessor Lula da Silva set to face a corruption trial and the larger part of the political class implicated in the corruption. Rousseff's adversaries have also manoeuvred to have her thrown out of office, though as she is so far avoided direct connection to the scandal, they have pursued her through accusations of fiscal malpractice (Prengaman, 2016).

The impeachment leaves Rousseff's former ally, and now leading figure amongst her opponents, Acting-President Michel Temer in the office of President. While he has the support of the political Right and business that wants austerity measures imposed, he isn't popular - having been booed during the Olympic opening ceremony.

Like Italy's Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigation that wiped away the country's established political system and all of its political parties in the early 1990s, Operation Car Wash has thrown open the doors to show how Brazil's system operates behind closed doors - and no one working within that system is likely to come out clean.

That situation is what has toppled Rousseff. The worry is for the political vacuum that might follow the toppling of the rest of the establishment - in Italy it was occupied by the arch-populist Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years.

Yet despite her defeat in what has been denounced as a parliamentary coup, Rousseff insists upon appealing her impeachment by who she describes as usurpers and coup-mongers (Watts & Bowater, 2016). But against a backdrop of massive political-corporate corruption, it is unclear what more can be done at the federal level until it is all swept away.

Clearly, Brazil needs a path out of this dense tangle of overlapping problems. The clear implication is that a new approach is needed.

One option that has been proposed is to embrace the municipal movement, most notably at work in Barcelona, at the local government elections in October and November (Wyllys, 2016). What municipalism offers is a chance to do things a bit differently.

Movements in Brazil are already organising around municipal principles - Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos (Many: the City We Want) in Belo Horizonte, for example (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016) - as a way move power away from political-corporate cliques.

With Brazil's federal politics - where pro-market corporate forces face off with populist social democrats over tax and spend projects like social welfare - mired in corruption and accusations, shifting the focus to local government instead could provide a route for citizens to get into politics in a more direct way and perhaps even start to dismantle the corruption from the ground up.

As elsewhere in the world, national politics has been choked by political-corporate cartels, whether de facto or de jure, that restrict political action and assume the driving seat in decision-making.

That path has lead to failures of leadership, where vigilant oversight is lacking - of which, if anything, Rousseff might be legitimately accused, due to being in a senior position during the height of the corruption and yet claiming no knowledge of what was going on.

Devolving power to citizens in their communities and encouraging open city government could help renew the system. And for the municipal movement itself, success in the cities of Brazil would be a major breakthrough.

It is one thing to argue for open source cities, using the twin means of free online resources and open participatory public spaces, that make the municipality a place where people can express their real political power (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016{2}).

It is another entirely to see municipal ideas applied to cities on different continents, with different contexts, and see them challenge massive corruption from below by engaging with people in their own communities and returning hope and power to them.