‘If she had been able to talk, she would be here now’: the dads calling on UK schools to teach suicide prevention

Tim Owen, Mike Palmer and Andy Airey setting off on 22 September 2022 on their month-long walking challenge to raise awareness about suicide. Photograph: Papyrus/PA

When Mike Palmer became a dad, he did everything he could to protect his daughters. From giving them lifts to doling out advice and making them do martial arts, he thought he was preparing them for life. Now, looking back, he believes he had a blind spot. “Unfortunately I was living in ignorant bliss,” the 58-year-old firefighter from Manchester says.

While Mike was alive to the risks posed by drugs, knife crime and speeding cars, it was only after his youngest daughter, Beth, took her own life that he learned suicide is the biggest killer of under-35s in the UK.