Frank Turner @ The Garage, Aberdeen (Kayleigh Morrison for Live4ever)
Musicians have lent their support to a new campaign by the charity CALM which is urging the government to address the high suicide rates among men in the UK.
84 men commit suicide in the UK every week, something CALM’s Project 84 is aiming to raise awareness of. Frank Turner, Professor Green and Sam Smith are some of those who have used their social media reach to spread the word, CALM’s petition states:
“Suicide claims the lives of more than 6,000 British men and women every year and is the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. Every single suicide directly affects 135 people – people like me, people like you. Beyond this unimaginable emotional cost, every single suicide costs an estimated £1.67 million – a cost to families, friends and wider society.”
“Yet no minister in the UK government is officially responsible for suicide prevention and bereavement support. No minister is mandated to represent the thousands of people every year who feel like suicide is their only option, or the hundreds of thousands of bereaved families whose lives will never be the same again.“
“On the face of it he had everything”
84 men take their own lives every week in the UK, but what are their stories? #Project84 launches Monday 26 March. pic.twitter.com/tHld89qIeI
— CALM (@theCALMzone) March 23, 2018