The last Scottish Government Suicide Prevention Strategy ran from 2013 to 2016. At its meeting on 27 March 2018, the Health and Sport Committee agreed to hold a one off evidence session on suicide prevention in Scotland on 12 June 2018. This session will follow the Scottish Government's consultation on its draft Suicide Prevention Action Plan and will precede its formal publication, which is expected at the end of June 2018. Ahead of this evidence session, the Committee launched a targeted call for views from relevant organisations (Including the Samaritans and the National Farmers Union) and will invite representatives of some of these organisations to take part in the roundtable evidence session on 12 June.

The call for views centred on four questions:

1. To what extent should the Scottish Government's Suicide Prevention Plan address the issue of inequality?
2. To what extent should the Scottish Government's Suicide Prevention Plan need a whole system approach?
3. What actions should be prioritised in the forthcoming strategy?
4. Should there be a focus on specific at risk groups and if so what groups would be appropriate?

Care Not Killing, which has campaigned on assisted suicide since 2006, was permitted to submit a response. We focussed our submission on the first and fourth questions, and addressed two key themes:

• The impact of intense and ongoing campaigning for assisted suicide for certain categories of persons (older, terminally ill, disabled etc) on how those persons, and society around them, value their lives; and
• The need for any suicide prevention strategy never to operate under the assumption that certain suicidal thoughts are more 'reasonable' or 'understandable' and thus to be addressed less passionately.
  
  

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