Suicide prevention focuses on a package of measures. These include kinder fairer societies as a long term measure. I don't know anyone working in suicide preve

Suicide prevention focuses on a package of measures. These include kinder fairer societies as a long term measure. I don't know anyone working in suicide prevention in England who isn't deeply aware of the wider determinants of mental ill health. (And I know a lot of people working in suicide prevention). But the package of measures also includes "preventing access to means and methods". This is because we know it makes a difference. We have some natural experiments to show this: changing the domestic supply of gas from coal gas to natural gas caused a substantial decline in deaths: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/ Changing cars to have catalytic convertors also caused a decline in deaths. People get caught up on this. They say "merely making it harder to buy paracetamol isn't addressing the root causes, you need to do that". They're right, but they're missing the point that this is supposed to be a package of measures that also looks at why people attempt suicide.