Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP) provides inpatient and community-based mental health care for people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon and Wiltshire. We also provide specialist services extending throughout the south west. We are passionate about promoting good mental health and wellbeing. We strive to use the expertise and resources within our organisation, and through our partnerships, to deliver high quality services that are safe and focused on people’s recovery.

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Our work in suicide prevention

At Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP), we have a suicide prevention strategy and a Zero Suicide strategy. We’ve introduced mandatory suicide prevention awareness training for all staff. This includes people in non-clinical roles. We are currently reviewing our other mandatory suicide prevention training. We publish our local suspected suicide data, as well as our suicide rate as determined by the NCISH.

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Our current priorities

Our priorities are engaging staff with the Zero Suicide ambition messages. Our focus is on people referred to services, but who following assessment, don’t meet the criteria for secondary care. Many of these people are discharged or ‘sign-posted’ to other services, but take their own life within weeks of this contact. There is a need for more ‘assertive sign-posting’ and an improved understanding that not requiring mental health services is not the same as not requiring emotional support and help.

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Our current challenges

Getting the above messages out to staff and modifying operational policies accordingly. Another challenge is convincing people that as a secondary care provider, we also have a primary suicide prevention role for those referred but not taken into service.

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