World Mental Health Day: 'There's always hope and help' - Health chief speaks of pain of losing brother to suicide as he supports prevention campaign

"Part of me was disbelieving that we couldn’t see this might happen. He was very kind, charismatic, handsome, popular. You find this a lot with people who die by suicide, there’s kind of a mask, particularly with men, a front they put on.”

Phil Webster had taken his own life on his first attempt aged just 32. At his funeral, hundreds gathered from across the country to pay their respects. How could he not see how much he was loved?, Rob wondered.

It took Rob ten years to really open up about what had happened to his beloved brother. “There still is and was then a big stigma around [suicide],” he says. In 2013, he put his feelings down into words, writing a blog post as part of a commitment he made to the Time to Change campaign, a drive aimed at reducing mental health-related stigma.

"Perhaps if that stigma didn’t exist and if more time was spent talking about mental health and whether young men are OK, I could be wishing him a happy 43rd birthday,” Rob wrote back then. Immediately after he published, people he knew began getting in touch. “They’d say that’s happened to me too, it’s happened to my family and they’d never spoken about it."

For Rob, the next step was telling his children about how their uncle had died. “I was really worried about telling them but I needn’t have been. They reacted in a really nice way, giving me a hug and wanting to talk about it.

"In my life, I think talking about experiences has been incredibly helpful both for me and for others...And I do think generally in 2023 we are much better at talking about wellbeing, mental health and so on.”

Rob, who is CEO for the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and heads up the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (WY HCP), was the first to sign up to become a suicide prevention champion as part of a campaign in the region.

The partnership launched the campaign earlier this year and today, on World Mental Health Day, it is continuing to urge people to pledge their support to the ambition to lower the suicide rate for West Yorkshire.

The campaign aims to recruit a growing cohort of champions who are willing to take an active role in challenging stigma and raising awareness. They can access suicide prevention news, resources, support services and information to help spread the word and encourage suicide prevention action in their home, communities and workplaces.

“We know that every person lost to suicide impacts many others and that impact lasts forever. It certainly is the case for me and my family,” Rob says. “Reducing suicides in West Yorkshire remains one of our ten big ambitions...Together we can make a difference.”

The most recent figures show that West Yorkshire continues to have a higher suicide rate than England as a whole, with a rolling three-year rate in registered suicide deaths of 13.2 per 100,000 people in 2021, compared to 10.4 per 100,000 nationally.

The partnership has set itself the ambition of recruiting 281 suicide prevention champions by the end of the year – one for each of the 281 people whose deaths were registered as suicides in West Yorkshire coroners’ courts in 2021.

People can sign up via an online form, watch a 20-minute suicide awareness video by the Zero Suicide Alliance, and make a pledge – big or small – about how they plan to promote suicide prevention and challenge the stigma of suicide.

For Rob, the fist around his heart is still squeezing, albeit ever more gently as time goes by. He hopes, with this campaign, that more families will be saved from his pain.

"If you talk to people who have attempted suicide and survived, they will say I’m so glad I failed, my life is substantially better,” he says. “There’s always hope and there’s always help. The more people understand that, the better.”

For more information and to sign up, visit suicidepreventionwestyorkshire.co.uk/becomeachampion