Roman Kemp: The Fight For Young Lives — release date, interview and everything we know

"After the last film ended, I went through a couple of years of pushing that narrative;  everyone needs to talk more, and the general public needs to do their bit and be the hero to their friends. There came a point when I started to wonder ‘Have we done our bit, and what’s next?’. What I kept seeing was that the numbers were just getting worse and worse, and I wanted to know why that was. OK, so we’ve seen what we have to do but what’s the real action that needs to happen and what’s the current state of that action? What help is out there when someone builds that courage? What I was realising is that people were talking more, but the help wasn’t there for them. 

"In the first film, I told Joe’s story. I felt like I was telling my story in understanding grief and understanding what had happened. We were left with a call out to the public to talk more, and to friends to be heroes to one another. I’ve heard so many people say, ‘We just can’t get the help’. After people talk, what do they do? Should we be getting lessons in schools? Could the NHS do more? Could CAMHs [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] do more? Trying to work out where the problem lies. Why are these numbers – in terms of deaths – still so high? And why are they not getting better?"

"More funding in terms of prevention. There is a lot of money that is spent on postvention and intervention, but you need to stop the problem before it even arises. You need to get into schools, you need to be able to provide those mental health support teams, that can help someone when they get to adult life, they know how to deal with these issues. 

"They are not presenting at A&E trying to work out what is happening with their brain, it would have been already learned and talked about at school. That’s a massive thing in this documentary, me going out asking what help do they need? Teachers are under so much stress. It was an eye-opener." 

"No, not at all. I have a very different view of it; I feel like I’ve seen both sides to it. I’ve come from the side of the person who wanted to take their own life, and also on the side where someone has taken their own life and that person is your best friend. So, you’ve seen the grief side of it, but you’ve also seen their side of it. I’m doing this for Joe and his family.  

"Also in a way, I’m doing this for me. You just know this problem is going to keep happening.  Unless someone does it, it’s not going to change. Sometimes for things to happen, there needs to be that one catalyst." 

"It would be that every school in the UK has a mental health support team. 

"What’s happening at the minute in the UK is if a child experienced some form of trauma when you take that into adult life it will re-emerge in poor mental health. It may well emerge into self-harm, drugs or alcohol abuse. Even as far as suicide. It will come back at some point in your life. So, if you look at the chain of events, the earlier you address that trauma the better. Imagine a child goes to school, and has been sexually abused, a witness or a victim of domestic violence, even as far as there’s an energy bill crisis going on, there’s a food crisis going on – imagine growing up in a home like that.  

"They have no one to speak to in school. A teacher may not want to have that conversation – and, rightly so – they don’t feel trained enough, and they haven’t got the qualifications to be able to have that conversation in a safe manner.  

"If that child doesn’t have anywhere to go, the danger is that they are just going to hold that trauma in for the rest of their lives. And it will re-emerge into something bad. 

"So, my idea, and what I would like to see, is that every school – even if one child is having those types of thoughts – that they have someone that they could go to, to talk to and to be properly cared for."