A RENEWED focus is needed to understand why more people in areas like Cumberland are affected by mental health issues and suicide, a university professor has said.
Cumbrians heard about the prevalence of mental health issues and suicide in the county in a webinar hosted by Pears Cumbria School of Medicine.
Professor Joy Duxbury OBE, from the University of Cumbria set out the stark differences in mental health data between areas, which shows that people in deprived communities are more likely to experience poor mental health.
More than one in five adults in Carlisle are diagnosed with depression, meaning that the area has the fourth highest rate in England.
Office for National Statistics data revealed in October that the Cumberland Council area has the fourth highest suicide rate in England.
When asked about Cumberland's high suicide rate, Professor Duxbury said: "It's a long term ambition to reduce those figures because they are still on the rise, so we're not on a downward trend here at the moment.
"I do think things like having the Health Determinants Research Collaborative (HDRC) with Cumberland Council is crucial and central to all of this."
Professor Duxbury said: "That's been funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (£4.8 million) and we as the university are one of the main academic partners."
HDRC staff are speaking to the public across Cumberland to better understand the health issues they face, data can then be used to address health inequalities.
Professor Duxbury said: "One of the research areas they've identified is mental health and neurodiversity too. So we will be working in partnership with them around that and aligning them to the Mental Health Leaders award as well."
The University of Cumbria director, whose background is in mental health nursing, said: "Let's hope that we start talking more about this and we start trying to find what the potential solutions are, that we can invest in research going forward that we will see a downward trend but it's not going to happen overnight."
She said: "It's a very complex picture as to why we're seeing these figures, there's no one solution or one answer as to why that might be the case but of course in Cumberland, there are more deprived areas. There certainly are more rural and coastal areas I would say. We're not seeing high figures for example in Kendal."
Funded by £2.5 million from NIHR, the Mental Health Leaders Award seeks to "explore the root causes of poor mental health" by listening to local voices.
The ambition is to use this learning to develop initiatives that will tackle health inequalities.
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