About Workplace Mental Health
This month a letter in The BMJ, the British Medical Journal, called for work-related suicide to be formally recognised and recorded in the UK. It was led by Professor Sarah Waters at the University of Leeds, and I was one of more than 30 signatories from across academia, industry and the charity sector. I signed it because it names a gap I have watched cause quiet damage for most of my working life: when someone takes their own life and work played a part, that link is rarely recorded and almost never investigated.
This piece explains what the letter asks for, why the recording gap should matter to every employer, and what you can do now without waiting for the law to change.
What the BMJ letter says
The letter makes a simple case. Work can be a contributing factor in suicide, through chronic overwork, job insecurity, bullying, humiliating treatment or badly handled organisational change. Yet in the UK there is no formal mechanism for recognising or recording work-related suicide. Deaths are not systematically examined for a work connection, employers are under no duty to report them, and no national picture exists. The letter calls for that to change, so that work-related suicides are recognised, recorded and investigated.
Why recording matters
Other countries already treat this differently. France and Australia investigate suicides where work is a factor, and treat them as a matter for employers and regulators, not only for families. The UK does not. That gap is not neutral. Without recording there are no patterns, without patterns there is no feedback to employers, and without feedback the same conditions repeat. Recording is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is how a system learns.
What this means for employers
You do not need to wait for legislation to take this seriously, and there are good reasons not to. The new British Standard on suicide prevention at work, BS 30480, exists precisely because work can be a contributing factor, and because there are practical, proportionate things organisations can do about it. It applies to every employer, in every sector, at every size, not only the industries that make headlines.
What you can do now
Name suicide as a workplace risk, not only a personal tragedy. Put it in your risk thinking alongside the hazards you already manage, so it has an owner, a plan and a review date.
Train managers to notice, ask directly, and respond, rather than look away. Asking someone whether they are thinking about suicide does not plant the idea. It opens a door.
Build clear routes to support, and check that people actually use them. A helpline poster in the kitchen is not a route to support. Managers need to know exactly where to send someone, and people need to trust that using support will not be held against them.
Look honestly at workload, insecurity and culture, the things that quietly wear people down. These are psychosocial hazards, and they can be assessed and managed like any other risk. If you already work with ISO 45003, this will feel familiar.
Recording the problem is the state’s job. Preventing it, where we can, is ours.
FAQ. Is work-related suicide recorded in the UK? No. There is currently no formal mechanism in the UK for recognising, recording or investigating suicides where work may have been a contributing factor. The BMJ letter, led by Professor Sarah Waters at the University of Leeds and signed by more than 30 experts, calls for this to change.
FAQ. What can employers do about suicide risk now? Employers can act without waiting for the law to change: name suicide as a workplace risk, train managers to notice and ask directly, build trusted routes to support, and manage the psychosocial hazards that wear people down, such as workload, insecurity and poor change management. BS 30480, the British Standard for suicide prevention in the workplace, sets out a proportionate framework for doing this.
About Peter Kelly and Being Real. Peter Kelly is an occupational psychologist with more than twenty years at the Health and Safety Executive, where he helped shape national policy on work-related stress and mental health. He sat on the drafting panel for ISO 45003 and was the expert convenor for BS 30480, the British Standard for suicide prevention in the workplace. Being Real helps organisations move from policy to practice on workplace mental health.
Note: this is a sensitive subject. If you are struggling, or worried about someone else, the Samaritans are there day or night on 116 123.