Introducing: Easha Kapur

Having just started working as a  Partnerships Officer in the Suicide Prevention Action Lab, I’m looking forward  to working with banks to explore better ways to support customers experiencing severe distress and suicidal thoughts or feelings.

The relationship between suicide and economic circumstances is something I’ve only became aware of in the last few years, which has made wonder whether – outside of academia and policy circles – these links are as widely understood as they should be.

You might assume that growing up with two doctors for parents, one of whom was a suicide prevention expert, would have informed me about the nuances of mental health from an early age. 

But the reality was quite different. While I was exposed to conversations about suicide from childhood, I struggled to understand what they meant in practice. For me, suicide was something very individualised and steeped in clinical discourse. I didn’t yet fully appreciate the role that wider social and economic circumstances can play. 

It wasn’t until I studied politics at university that this began to change. I became increasingly aware of the profound links between societal circumstances and suicide, and it was a shock to see something I had always viewed through a medicalised lens reframed as an economic, cultural and political issue. I began to understand that suicide and poor mental health don’t exist in isolation from our socioeconomic circumstances. They are closely intertwined and – in too many tragic cases – they can’t be separated. 

That’s what drew me to Money and Mental Health. The charity addresses an important and still overlooked dimension of suicide prevention: the economic factors that shape our wellbeing and can influence our risk of reaching crisis point.

Since I started working here, one of the phrases I come across frequently is one used in suicide prevention strategies:

Suicide is everyone’s business. 

It sounds simple but it captures something I find particularly compelling about suicide prevention. It is not just a medical issue, nor is responsibility for tackling it confined to clinicians. We all have a role to play, including the financial services sector. 

In many ways, I feel fortunate to live at a time when our understanding of suicide and its economic risk factors have developed enough to identify opportunities for prevention. But understanding the evidence is only the starting point; the real challenge is using that knowledge, alongside the insights of those with lived experience, to shape meaningful action. This means empowering organisations across society, especially financial organisations, to play their part in preventing people from reaching crisis point.

I’m excited to get stuck into this role, working with banks and building societies to help translate this understanding into meaningful action. If suicide prevention really is everyone’s business, then recognising the role of banks in suicide prevention is an important place to start.