Turning to a separate angle, many people feel unable to talk about their mental health, mainly due to the stigma that still surrounds admitting they have a problem. We need to overcome this issue so that everybody feels comfortable to seek the help they need without fear of being judged or losing face. Access to appropriate and timely specialised services is key in ensuring people get the support they need. There must be parity in the support available for mental and physical health conditions, so that people can access appropriate support when they need it to prevent reaching a point of crisis. Therefore, we are pleased that the Government has accepted recommendation 6 of this report, where the committee calls for all necessary steps to be taken to ensure this parity. We look forward to seeing how a new delivery plan will address this need and expect this work to move at pace, including development of the mental health core data set.

Recommendations 7 and 12 refer to urgent referral routes for GPs and the waiting times for psychological therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy. Although the Minister has accepted these, the Government’s response does not marry with the evidence heard by the committee during this inquiry. We heard from GPs that it is often very difficult for them to refer and get someone seen as quickly as they believe is necessary. With serious physical illness, GPs can ring doctors in secondary care hospitals for immediate hospital admission. No such right exists for GPs' access to secondary care psychiatric doctors. It is unacceptable that mental health services are not prioritised in the same way as physical health, and this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Turning to male suicide, inability to talk about mental health is particularly true of men. Throughout our evidence gathering, we heard that men, particularly middle-aged men, are at higher risk of suicide. It is a staggering statistic that suicide is the single biggest cause of death among men aged 20 to 49 years. We need to overcome this issue so that everyone feels comfortable to seek the help they need without fear of being judged. New approaches are now needed to encourage help-seeking behaviour and to improve mental health, well-being and resilience among men. These can make a huge difference, but often rely on the commitment of individuals or are unsustainable due to short-term funding of charitable institutions. Reducing and, ultimately, preventing male suicide needs to be recognised as a national priority, and we are pleased that the Minister has accepted recommendation 18.

There are certain factors that create risk and stress to people living in rural areas over and above the suicide risk factors affecting general populations. The committee heard that, whilst there are no specific statistics available on the number of farmers who had completed suicide, all farmers knew a farmer who had taken their own life. We were particularly struck by the evidence provided by Tir Dewi when they told us, and I quote:

'When a death occurs on a farm, the cows still need to be milked this morning, and this evening and tomorrow'.

This clearly demonstrates the importance of understanding the impact various pressures can have on farmers’ mental health and the need for mental health awareness training to be undertaken by staff of all those organisations who interact with farmers and their families.

We welcome the Minister’s response to recommendation 22 and we note that the Welsh Government’s farm liaison service have recently attended training. However, I would highlight that all staff who work to support farmers would benefit from this training, such as those involved in arranging farm inspections. The committee was particularly pleased to learn that the Farmers' Union of Wales has recently made a public commitment to further raise awareness of mental health problems in rural communities.

Turning briefly to prisoners’ risk of suicide and self-harm in Wales, the committee is pleased that the Government has accepted this recommendation. The committee is embarking on an inquiry into prison healthcare and will take the opportunity to look at this issue in more depth over the coming months.

Finally, we welcome the additional £500,000 annually recently announced by the Minister towards the delivery of suicide prevention in Wales. We know that the Samaritans report that the average cost of a suicide in the general population is estimated at £1.67 million per completed suicide, which clearly highlights the economic cost of suicide. While, in his response to recommendation 31 of this report, the Minister accepts in principle the need for specific funding to be made available for suicide prevention, the committee would wish to see some protected resource. We would therefore welcome further information on how this additional funding will be spent.