Tim Woodhouse, an NIHR Doctoral Local Authority Fellow in the Centre for Health Services Studies, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour and by the Guardian last week as the true consequences of domestic abuse were brought into the spotlight.
His initial research, conducted during his role as a Suicide Prevention Programme Manager in the Public Health team at Kent County Council, suggests that approximately 30% of suicides in Kent have been impacted by domestic abuse (either as victim or perpetrator). If replicated nationally this would equate to over 1,500 lives lost each year. As the Guardian reported last Monday, this suggests that official statistics are vastly under-reporting the true number of cases in England and Wales.
The large number of individuals who have died by suicide after their lives were impacted by domestic abuse has been an increasing concern for Tim since he first started working suicide prevention in 2014. His passion around this injustice is what led him to pursue a Churchill Fellowship which saw him gather best practice from around the world and collate it in the report ’66 ways to reduce domestic abuse related suicides.’ Now his PhD is enabling him to further that research on an academic level.
‘I first started looking into this issue as a result of professional curiosity. I wanted to know whether the scale of deaths we were seeing in Kent were replicated elsewhere in the country, or across the world. I still have that curiosity, but that has been joined by anger and sadness that so many victims of domestic abuse are dying needlessly, and also by frustration that as a country we don’t seem to know what the true scale of this issue is, nor more importantly, do we have any real idea about how to reduce the number of people losing their lives in this way.’
‘I hope that my PhD will continue to shine a spotlight on this issue and encourage other researchers across the country to join me in studying this hideous and complex phenomenon. I also intend to develop recommendations for front-line professionals who support victims of domestic abuse which may reduce their risk of suicide.’
Tim is benefiting from support and guidance from three supervisors as he conducts his research: Professor Lindsay Forbes and Dr Ferhana Hashem, joint Interim Directors of the Centre for Health Services Studies at Kent; and Dr Pauline Turnbull, Project Director & Academic Lead for the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) at The University of Manchester.
As a student in the Centre for Health Services Studies, Tim is part of a community of researchers undertaking high quality research into a wide range of health and social care systems and health and care services issues at local, national and international levels. As well as providing health and social policy insights for national decision-makers, they work with local government and health services across Kent, Surrey and Sussex to build research capacity and culture and address the key health and social care research needs across our region.