By Roger Talbot, Salisbury.

Dear Editor,

I’m writing to you about the amount of times our local emergency services have been called out to suicide and self-harm incidents.

The government currently doesn’t ensure our emergency services provide staff with any national standard of suicide prevention training; and yet, Samaritans found that last year, South Western Ambulance Service were called out to 87,290 mental health-related and 28,667 suicide and self harm-related incidents.

These new figures show just how often our local emergency workers are in contact with those in suicidal crises – and why training all emergency response workers in suicide prevention is urgent.

Right now, our emergency responders and anyone who is in crisis from our community are being failed. These workers are often first on the scene when someone is suicidal, so providing them with the skills and confidence they need to identify and support anyone who is suicidal could save lives.

I urge readers to email your local MP and back Samaritans’ call for mandatory suicide prevention training for our emergency responders, to help reduce lives lost to suicide in Salisbury.