the band of weather will move from west to east. there it is on thursday, and there is the chance it will bring more frontal systems into the south—western quarter to provide a spell of really quite wet weather, some windy conditions. in between those weather fronts, thursday is going to be a murky old day with a lot of cloud around, but especially so in the west. the headlines. president trump says the leader of the so—called islamic state group has died after a military operation. a brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship

and death has violently been eliminated the us says he detonated an explosives vest after being cornered. the government presses ahead to get a december general election. it will be debated in parliament tomorrow. now it is disclosure. the biggest killer of young men in this country is themselves. i think men are struggling. there's still huge stigma if you're a man talking about mental health problems. last year, suicide in scotland rose

to its highest level in five years. disclosure has filmed in one area where this increase has been felt, with those in the front line of suicide prevention... there's people that we can't get because they've acted on impulse. ..and in the town rocked by four teenage deaths in less than two months. it generates a huge amount of fear around what might be happening with our young people. we find people trying to make sense of these deaths... this consumes you every second of every minute of every day. ..when those with the answers are no longer here. motherwell football club in the heart of post—industrial lanarkshire. its entire identity is wrapped up in the area's steel—making past — a place for the working man. but today, its claret and amber shirts promote suicide prevention. on match days, messages and signs encouraging fans to speak out, seek help, are all around fir park. that's because three—quarters

of people who kill themselves in the uk are men. it's the single biggest killer of men under 50 in this country, and this club has suffered loss. how many fans are you aware of that have taken their own life from this club in the last couple of years? we estimate anything between 12 and 2a over the last two years. 24? one a month from...? yeah, which is a horrendous statistic. you know, and the youngest of that is in their teens. you know, the oldest is maybe in their kind of late 30s, early 405. you know, and just to put that into context, that's such a tragedy. i mean, that's the age of what... ..the guys who should be playing on our pitch. how are you affected when you hear about the stories of these fans? it actually hurts everybody here because we are a big family. we tell everybody we're a family club, so when one person takes their life, it affects loads of people. it's notjust the immediate family. it's their friends. it's the whole general supporter base. we've had, you know, numerous minutes of applauses over the last couple of months. we had a really fantastic one for one of the young fan group who took their own life, and the fans did the thunder clap.

that was in memory of him. it was almost a celebration of his life. it was, like, spine—tingling, but it was also really sad, as well, that that young lad will never be able to experience that again. drum bangs fans clap bagpipes play that young fan was lloyd welsh. less than three months after his death, i meet his family at their home just a mile and a half from fir park stadium. they're still stunned by his sudden loss. he used to go to motherwell games regularly. die—hard motherwell fan. up at eight o'clock in the morning, getting ready. that was one of the big highlights of his life — watching motherwell.

he used to go out all the time. he started staying in his room. we thought maybe he had had enough of that kind of life. you do not think anything like that will happen to your son. i was here myself with lloyd and i told him i was going up the street. i was only going... ..a quick thing and back down, so i was away out of the house a0 minutes, and when i came back, the house was quiet. when i went up to the top of the stairs, that devastating sight that i saw... i fell down the stairs. i was out in the middle of the street screaming. to find anybody like that's bad, but to find my own son...

to think that there was something going through his head that he had to do that, that has destroyed me. to the family, it's like lloyd left without warning... ..but really he'd been growing steadily isolated from them, spending hours a day alone in his room. after finding him upstairs, yvonne couldn't look at her home in the same way any more. but the garden helps her to remember. do you feel coming out here helps? 0h, aye. i'm out here every day. every day. i sit on my swing, and i sit there and i talk to him. what about you 7 you look through the window. i look out the window. i mean, you know, i can take it or leave it, to be quite honest with you. i'm dealing with it in a different kind of way, but, you know, it doesn't bother me. but i thinkjust getting reminded about it all the time makes it a wee bit harder for me. you know, i will never forget him, but, you know, when it's kind of in your face, i don't... we're the opposite that way. i like looking at it. aye.

it's a shame. well, he'll never be forgotten. never in this household, anyway, that's for sure. rory, how are you doing? hi, chris. nice to meet you. come on in. cheers, thank you. there's still huge stigma if you're a man talking about mental health problems or talking about stress. we need to challenge that, continue to challenge it. there have been huge strides forward in the last 20 years that i've been working in the field, but we still have so far to go — so, so far to go — because men are still reluctant to seek help, men are still reluctant to actually reach out in that moment of crisis. it was about three years ago it happened the first time to one of my friends. lloyd's brotherjordan plays for local amateur team motherwell thistle. he's surrounded by suicide.

there have been four connected to just his team in recent years. it is a common thing, but it shouldn't be a common thing. it's happening far too often. see when it happens to you on a couple of occasions, you see the consequences it leaves behind. motherwell thistle wear armbands for paul gerard aiton, or pg, their former goalkeeper. watching the game is his mother catherine. pg was very much a bubbly chap. maybe a touch spoiled. i don't know. very, very sporty. but above all, i think his first love was dean martin. she laughs so, he was quite a smooth kind of character, was he? yeah, mm—hm. absolutely. but a quiet lad at the same time. he would never get into any trouble or anything like that. so, this came totally out of the blue. nothing. no warning signs.

absolutely nothing at all. i don't know where it came from. pg was 23 at the time of his suicide. in the months before, his life had been at a turning point. he was moving into a flat. he was going to be a daddy. there was a lot of changes for pg going on at that time. maybe he was a bit scared about the future. i don't know. boop! i never moved into the house that we were going to move into. when the baby came, it was brilliant, but at the same time, even still when i was in the hospital, i was thinking, "where is he?" like, "you should be here for this." and then i think... obviously, everybody finds it hard, and i found it hard, as well, looking at the baby at first cos you think, "aw, does she look like him? " and then it was hard for people coming up to the hospital to see her, as well, and his family. you could see that they were visibly upset because everybody's thinking,

"he should be here," and, like... and he wasn't. i don't know, for some reason, if he just thought that he couldn't speak to anyone. when something like this happens, everybody says, like, "oh, was he depressed? "was there any signs that he was suicidal "or anything like that? " and there wasn't. i speak about it freely because i can, because i've been impacted in it, but i certainly feel that some people are still awkward round about me, you know, because of what's happened. they think, "oh, what will i say to her?" "how will i...? will i mention it? will i not mention it?" and particularly because it is suicide, because it's such a complicated grief. it's notjust a bereavement. it's... if pg was killed in a car crash oi’ even... sometimes, i think if he was murdered, it would be easier because i would have somebody else to blame. whereas there's nobody else to blame now except for him with this. and how does that make you feel?

angry. absolutely angry. i feel angry with him. i'm devastated that i'll never see him again. i get angry that i can never... he'll never be held to account for what he's done. i feel embarrassed and ashamed of him. that's part of it, as well, because, personally, i do think... i feel that. he's caused so much pain to his loved ones. his daughter's growing up without ever meeting her dad. still, you love him? oh, i love him. i can say what i like about him! they laugh i love him to bits. it's an unconditional. and it's so hard knowing that you're never going to see him again, ever. like lloyd, pg gave no warning before he killed himself. he left nothing to explain why.

neither catherine nor naomi have the answers, but research shows that all suicides have one main thing in common. suicide's not about wanting to die, necessarily. it's wanting the pain to end. you feel trapped by this unbearable mental pain. "the only way i can get relief is by ending my life." so, that internal entrapment is actually at the heart of thinking about the suicidal mind and the vulnerability, what drives an individual to actually think about suicide, and then, sadly, take their own life. if we can understand better the driver to that suicidal crisis, the drivers to that entrapment, we can hopefully save many, many more lives. four deaths linked to just one football team in

less than three years. research suggests that knowing someone who's killed themselves can heighten your own risk of suicide. here in lanarkshire, the deaths of the thistle lads were part of a 45% rise last year. that is just one year, and we don't know if it's part of a longer—term trend. but why have more young men in this area killed themselves? to explore this, i've come to a neighbouring town also dealing with suicide among its young male population. this is wishaw, where i grew up. it was just the same as any sort of small town in the central belt. imean... i think, if you go to any town of its size that's lost its industry, you'll see the same problems — you'll see a lot of charity shops, you'll see very little economic activity. something's been happening here. this old bank building in the town centre is now occupied by a group of volunteers — a financial institution replaced

by a suicide charity in a town in economic decline. no, it's no' stupid at all, hen. they're on call 2a hours a day to offer support and counselling to those bereaved by suicide or those considering it. what time did i say there? they see hundreds of people a month. the charity is called chris's house. anne rowan started it four years after her son christopher took his own life. i became very ill — mentally ill — through christopher dying. i felt such a failure. really overwhelming guilt that i couldn't save my son. overwhelming guilt that i must have been a terrible mother that my son didn't come and tell me how bad that he felt. ijust knew there had to be something to bridge the gap. i knew there had to be something immediate. our whole aim was to stop

people dying from suicide, to stop people having to wait and feel undervalued... ..on nhs waiting lists. and that's not... please understand that is not a criticism of the nhs. that's just the overwhelming amount of people that need help. the average wait to begin psychological treatment with mental health services in lanarkshire is ten weeks. people who feel they can't wait come to chris's house. they very seldom come in and say they're feeling suicidal. they come in and say, "a pal asked me to come here," or, "my mammy asked me to come here," or their mammy‘s standing with them and their heads are down, so... the whole thing is, see when they've come in the door, chris, they're asking for help. so, you're halfway there. they're not coming in to beat about the bush. they're coming in broken... ..and wanting support to get themselves through

the rest of their life. women are more likely than men to ask for that support. in chris's house, astyn hasjust finished a counselling session. i had mental health problems since i was, like, 14, 15, and i had been going and getting help and it was just... there was nothing really there for me. like, it was kind of pillar to post. just referred here, referred there. "ta ke these tablets. " there was nothing. there was no support. 2017, i had a breakdown. i actually tried to take my own life. basically, when that night happened, i was at my friend's house. he went out and i just stayed in, and then i had a dream that night and it was just... something just clicked and ijust said, "i just need to do it. "it's just my time to go." and i actually did do it. but my friends came home from the party early and found me and saved my life, basically.

talk to me about your dad. my dad was a very... not quiet. he was very closed in his self. you just thought he was, like, the typical dad, like, the big, strong man, and could do anything for you and would always protect you type of thing. and he was just always there. and while i had been ill all that time, he had also been ill, but he just never, ever showed it. and he was always there to protect me and look after me and wouldn't let me go, but he, at that time, was also struggling with his mental health. he was feeling the same as you? mm—hm. but nobody had any idea at all. i came home from work and ifound my dad, and he had actually taken his own life in the house. and i came back to chris's house straight away because i knew i wasn't letting myself go back down that road, and i wanted to help people. i want to help people and i want to show people you can come back from it. astyn survived, but how does something that's statistically rare — a suicide attempt — happen twice in one family

in less than a year? can closeness be a factor? over the course of seven weeks in the spring of 2018, four teenage boys in wishaw took their own lives. the local paper described it as an epidemic. murray was the last of them. murray had told me that he felt as if he didn't fit in and... ..me being me, itried to tell him that... ..it's... really, if he feels that he doesn't fit in, it makes him unique, it makes him him, it makes him lovable and... ..that's what makes him stand out from everybody else. murray, i don't think, knew the words to say how he was feeling, what was going on. i tried really hard... ..but, again, i think, with me being his mum, it's just too close, but...

..we had spoken. i'd asked him how he was feeling and he told me he was fine, but he obviously wasn't. what i'm trying to do is stop somebody else having to go through what we've been through as a family. near the place where murray died, jane has left mementos, messages of love and hope. it's her own method of suicide prevention. do you think all this is part of a way of trying to... ..get some meaning or some goodness out of what happened to murray? i need to learn from what happened last year. i need to find something out of murray dying. i think it's a way of helping me, as well, to get...

..to understand why i have to feel this pain... ..why i had to lose my son. but some people in the area want to move on, and complain to the council about some of jane's signs. a few weeks after we filmed with her, they were taken down. there are connections here. three weeks before murray died, his friend, 16—year—old callum dunne, took his own life in the same place. hello. how are you getting on? good to see you. how are you doing? i'm all right. all right. my name's shannon brown. i'm the sister of callum dunne. picture there.

were you close to him? i was, aye. i was. we'd kind of drifted apart when my mum died and they moved house, and obviously i moved here. but he was always in at least once a week visiting, making sure we were all right. you mentioned your mum dying there. tell me what happened there and how that affected callum. my wee brother went in to wake my mum up from her bed to go to school, and she'd passed away due to a brain haemorrhage during the night. so, callum, he was obviously by himself, so i think that played a big part in it because he obviously felt guilty not being able to save my mum. callum, like pg at thistle, had been drinking before his death. research shows that alcohol and substance use can heighten the risk for those already vulnerable to suicide. but there is another factor in callum's death. weeks before he died, his childhood friend

also killed himself. callum, he was obviously one of a number... yes. ..in that time. well, the full place, like, it was devastating because, like, in each different wee bit of community, there was somebody suffering loss, and it wasjust a horrible, horrible time. but, in a way, i think it's kind of brought, like, all the people that are grieving and stuff together because, like, we all obviously understand what each other are feeling. murray knew callum, who knew someone else. in just two months in 2018, four teenagers in a town ofjust 30,000 people killed themselves. like the motherwell thistle team, this was a group of deaths among connected people over a short space of time.

but did these deaths really influence one another? can suicide be contagious, or were these boys vulnerable to self—harm anyway? we know that, if you know somebody close to you who has died by suicide, your own risk of suicide has increased. we know that. there's lots of different ways in which that could be associated with increased risk, but usually, to my mind, it is the individual already vulnerable, and that vulnerability — the exposure to a suicide of another — increases your vulnerability because you're dealing with this trauma of losing a friend or a family member. after the loss of these young men, a sense of anxiety grew around the town. this was the front page of the wishaw press in may 2018. the local community is more aware than ever before that its young men are taking their own lives... ..and this, in turn, has had an impact on mental health services,

with urgent referrals for under—18s almost doubling in 18 months. does that have a knock—on effect on others? it can do, and i think that's where you see the increased levels of distress and therefore the increased referrals for that distress. and it's important to recognise that suicide is an extremely rare event, although we talk about it, but it generates a huge amount of fear. and you get the fear within the community around what might be happening with our young people, and i think that's a natural and understandable fear. scotland's suicide rate has gone down over the past 20 years.

last year, though, suicides among young people increased by 50% on the previous year, bringing scotland's total to 784 — the highest for five years. few of the young men we've mentioned were seeking help at the time of their deaths. if services don't know people are in crisis, then how can they help them? there are other things we need to think about, particularly engaging young men, and what are the right ways to go about doing that? you're looking at an age at which people are moving away from families very often. they're certainly moving away from school, which has possibly been a supportive mechanism for them. their social relationships are altering. there is the potential for alcohol and drug use to start creeping in around those ages. relationships are often at difficult stages around that time, and expectations can be very high. choir sings during filming this summer, two volunteers from chris's house took their own lives.

the truth is, unless they tell us, no—one knows for certain, in that final moment, why anyone kills themselves. what we do know is that, if you're from a more disadvantaged background, if you've experienced childhood trauma, and — crucially — if you're already vulnerable and you're exposed to suicide, either in the form of a close friend or a family member or a team—mate, then you're more at risk. every year, chris's house organises its walk of hope event in glasgow. hundreds of people affected by suicide come together to remember those who they've lost. so, the walk‘s just set off. it's the early hours of the morning. soon, we'll see the sunrise coming up along here, and the idea is that everybody's walking from the darkness and into light.

there is connection here. it's notjust motherwell or wishaw. these people have come from all over, most of them strangers to one another, but sharing that same complicated grief. and like the welshes, like murray's mum, pg's mum, that grief drives them to try and save someone else's son. we are going to be sad sometimes. it's ok not to be ok... ..but don't stay there. there is always help out there. you just need to ask for it. take five minutes. just think about what you're doing. think what you're doing to your mum. do you want your mum to be like me? even if you don't feel as if you love yourself, somebody does. you're somebody's world. there is light at the end of the tunnel. you can go forward and back as many times, but you'll always come out at the end.

sunday brought a lot of fine dry cooler weather to many parts of the british isles. that is how it will stay in the next few days. it will be colder than of late both by day and also by night. we can thank the influence of the big area of high pressure there. showers are still across mainly the north of scotland. elsewhere skies will be clear, save the far south—west. maybe the odd

spot of rain. a widespread frost overnight. mandate will start on a chilly note. there is a chance you will be scraping the car for the first time this season. once the data is up and running it will be a gloriously sunny day. one or two showers across northern and eastern coastal areas. cloud towards the western end of the channel. maybe rain in the far south—west.

this is bbc world news today. our top stories: the us says its forces have killed the leader of the so—called islamic state group, abu bakr al—baghdadi, often described as the world's most wanted man. a brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated. reports say the operation was planned for weeks. president trump says no us military personnel were killed. a state of emergency across california as wildfires continue to spread, whipped up by strong winds. and vigils in vietnam for the 39 people found dead in a refrigerated lorry on the outskirts of london.