The Sun, MF Magazine – 24th November 2013 – Choose Life
Dave Hart was not – to the outside world at least – what you might call “unhappy”. He was a natural joker, popular, talented, intelligent and had signed a contract for a new job with an air conditioning fitter company that he started when he finished college. He had everything to live for. But two years ago, Dave’s mother Lynne found his body hanging in the loft of the family home. He had taken his own life aged just 17. “It was a massive shock…” remembers Lynne, 57, a church pastor who lives in Easton, Somerset, with her husband Don, 67, also a pastor.
Tragically, Dave’s story is not unusual. The stats are brutal – suicide is the biggest single killer of young men in the UK according to CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).
“Men are feeling increasingly redundant” says Dr William Shanahan, consultant psychiatrist and medical director at the Nightingale Hospital in London. “The recession has had a real impact on men who can’t support their families in the way they’ve been brought up to…”
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