Ashtons Partner attends Zero Suicide Alliance launch

Yesterday (9 May 2019), Ashtons Medical Negligence partner, Sharon Allison, attended the Inaugural launch of the Zero Suicide Alliance (ZSA) in London.

This initiative was born largely out of the inspirational drive, Steve Mallen, who tragically lost his 18 year old son, Edward Mallen to suicide. Steve made a solemn promise to his son at his funeral that he would investigate the failures in his care and would seek reform to mental health care to prevent similar tragedies. Steve joined forces with Geraldine Strathdee (National Clinical Director for Mental Health) and Joe Rafferty (CEO of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust) whose Trust is known within the mental health field as having a centre of excellence and achieving significant reductions in suicide rates. Together, they took their plight to Jeremy Hunt (then Health Secretary) who pledged funding to assist this initiative and to provide funding for all Trusts within the country to funds to fund Suicide liaison managers and to focus on post-vention services such as supporting bereaved families through the investigation and inquest process.

Yesterday’s event was primarily to launch the initiative and to get Trusts around the country on board with particular focus on suicide prevention.

Sharon took part in a podcast at the event with The Mental Elf, you can listen on SoundCloud here – https://soundcloud.com/national-elf-service/sharon-allison?in=national-elf-service/sets/zsaconf19-zero-suicide

Sharon comments: “Mental illness is indiscriminate and can affect anyone at any time. I would urge everyone to please to spare 20 minutes out of your day or your evening to visit ZSA’s website (link below) and do the suicide prevention training. It offers a number of practical tips to help colleagues, your family at home or even a complete stranger. The more people that know what to look for and how to handle these situations, the better.

What you do could really save a life.”

https://www.zerosuicidealliance.com/