A REVOLUTION in mental healthcare is needed to decrease the number of adolescent males committing suicide, Labour members said yesterday.

Delegates meeting at the party’s annual conference in Brighton voted unanimously yesterday to adopt a motion to drastically develop mental healthcare for young men.

The motion, dubbed the Caerphilly Strategy by its author Morgan Paulett, hopes to combat the growth of depression and poor mental health among boys and young men.

This would include vastly increasing forms of support available to young men including 24-hour universal crisis care, mental health education and a national recruitment drive for mental health staff.

Suicide is the biggest killer of boys and men aged between 20 and 49.

Moving the motion Mr Paulett described the experience of his brother being on suicide watch.

He told delegates: “I never thought I would ever have reason to be scared of a ringing phone.

“However, after the day we received a phonecall saying that my brother had been placed on suicide watch during his time at university, every time our house phone rang, it filled every room with this sense of dread.”

Mr Paulett also described the experience of trying to take his own life.

To massive applause he said that a Labour government should “revolutionise” mental health services so that “there isn’t a door on these isles that we can’t reach when someone is in crisis.”