10 September 2025

TW: suicide, abuse

Today marks World Suicide Prevention Day.

The latest figures from the ONS (released August 2024) show that rates of suicide in England and Wales have reached their highest level in more than two decades. Three-quarters of these deaths are males, but the female suicide rate has also reached its highest level since 1994.

In March of this year, a report by The Domestic Homicide Project revealed that the number of victims of domestic abuse who took their own lives in England and Wales has surpassed the amount of people killed by their partner for the second year in a row.

“Every life lost to domestic abuse is one too many and a failure by our systems”. - Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner

These are not just statistics, they are lives lost too soon and preventable tragedies. As the Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs noted in March 2024, “Every life lost to domestic abuse is one too many and a failure by our systems”.

Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews (formerly Domestic Homicide Reviews) reveal time and again that domestic abuse-related suicide is under recognised, far too frequent and often preventable. Yet too often lessons go unheeded, and recommendations remain unfulfilled.

At Hestia, our refuges offer EMDR therapy, a specialist therapeutic approach designed to help people process their trauma. For survivors this can mean reducing the intensity of flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and feelings of fear or shame.

Unfortunately, survivors outside of refuge often face waiting lists of many years and for some that wait is too long. Mental health services and therapeutic interventions are underfunded, over stretched, and not always trauma informed.

In order to meet the government’s ambition of halving VAWG in the next 10 years, access to mental health support must be trauma-informed, financially secure and accessible to all who need it.

---

You might also be interested in...