Worthing mum invited to Downing Street to discuss suicide prevention with policy chiefs

Ann Feloy, who won a Points of Light award in October for her work with Olly’s Future, was personally invited to 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

She was joined by Olly’s Future vice-chair Oskar Schortz and UCL Medical School director Professor Faye Gishen for the visit on Friday to talk to the policy team about suicide prevention.

Ann's son Olly Hare took his own life on February 14, 2017 – two days before his 23rd birthday. She believes there were failings in his care and says all medical students should have universal suicide prevention training as part of their core curriculum.

Ann said: "It’s imperative doctors have this training and yet it is not taught as part of the core curriculum. My charity now works with medical schools across the UK teaching suicide prevention skills so that our future doctors and caregivers can look after their own wellbeing, their peers and their future patients.

"Too often SSRIs are prescribed in place of a therapeutic conversation. I devised Dr SAMS (Suicide Awareness in Medical Students) to fill this gap and want government backing to ensure it is run in all medical schools.”

Staff at 10 Downing Street heard first-hand about how Olly’s Future has used personal tragedy to help save vulnerable young lives. Almost 2,000 students at six medical schools in England and Wales have now had its two-part training.

Dr SAMS teaches practical skills to talk about and prevent suicide and techniques to increase self-reflection and self-compassion for people's own wellbeing.

Olly went to UCL to study history and Dr SAMS has been run at UCL Medical School two years running.

Faye wrote in the BMJ that 'we have a duty of care to our future doctors' and that 'as a profession, we need to discuss suicide openly, and extend these discussions beyond patients to include our colleagues and students'.

She added: "Suicide is the most common avoidable cause of death in young people. There is an allied and growing literature around medical student perfectionism, anxiety, depression, burnout and suicidal ideation, and the data suggest that stigma and fear of fitness to practise sequelae can inhibit medical students seeking help.”

In 2020, Olly’s Future received funding from the British Medical Association (BMA) for the pilot at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The programme combined the charity's flagship 90-minute Talking about Suicide: Ten Tools online suicide prevention training and its 90-minute online Reflective CareSpaces.

The programme is now in its fourth year and has been expanded to six medical schools, including Canterbury Christ Church, Cardiff, Exeter, Kent and Medway and UCL, providing training for more than 1,910 medical school students.

Ann said: "Some funding is still provided by the BMA, however participating medical schools now fund this themselves, often including it in their core curricula.

"Olly’s Future’s vision is a world where no young person loses their life to suicide. In 2023, one of its trustees was given a Churchill Fellowship award to visit medical schools in America, Canada and India this spring to develop potential international collaboration."