To ask the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety for an update on his Department's suicide prevention strategy, including details of existing targets to address and reduce suicide.

A wide range of services and programmes are delivered under the “Protect Life” strategy. These include the Lifeline crisis response service, suicide prevention training, community-based counselling support, education campaigns, self harm prevention programmes, and bereavement support. A new strategy is being developed and will be issued for public consultation in 2016.

The long-term goal of “Protect Life” is to reduce the prevalence of suicide in Northern Ireland; the aim, within the lifetime of the current strategy, is to reduce the differential in the suicide rate between deprived and non-deprived areas within Northern Ireland. To date, this inequality gap has remained constant, although the final outcome will not be known until 2016 as suicide rates are measured on a three year rolling average.