Zero Suicides in the Community
If your local community got together, what would everyone agree is an acceptable number of suicides? It's likely that the response would be 'zero'.
Suicide can affect anyone but everyone can help prevent suicides.
For this part of our strategy, our actions are aimed at benefitting communities, including; schools, colleges and universities, local businesses, non-professional and professional sports clubs and teams, local chambers of commerce and business groups and associations, local charities and support groups, local NHS and mental health teams, suicide prevention leads, charities and other third sector organisations and groups by sharing relevant information, advice, awareness-raising, education, and support to help create communities where suicide prevention is more openly discussed and deaths by suicide become increasingly rare events.
We collaborate with local communities and those providing mental health and suicide prevention support, who support our vision to move toward a ‘Zero Suicide Society’.
Working with the community, we will identify and share what is working well within these communities, so that others may learn from these initiatives and implement similar approaches.
We will design and run events, workshops, conferences and educational talks which will raise awareness and also provide practical guidance.
We will always encourage high ambition in preventing suicides and promote strategies and actions that can significantly reduce the numbers of deaths within our communities and reduce the number of referrals to NHS mental health crisis centres.
We will also challenge those groups, organisations and bodies who appear to be setting low ambition targets.
We also understand the importance of engaging with the latest research and we have commissioned such studies with our collaborative partners, MEL Research, who disseminate research that can assist in advancing mental health and suicide prevention within our communities. Check out this particular research study: “Let’s Talk About Suicide?!”.
We understand that many of those in our communities who engage with us may be struggling with their mental health or suicidal thoughts. We will safeguard these individuals by providing signposting to appropriate support services, which can be found on the Help & Resources section of our website via this link.
5 practical actions you can take now.
Here are 5 easy to implement actions your community can start taking today, which would help keep people safe:
- Everyone to take away these 2 key messages: “Anyone can be affected by suicide” and “Everyone can help prevent suicides”.
- Ensure everyone in your family, business, school, community group, restaurant, pub and any other location which considers itself to be a community environment, receives mental health and suicide awareness training. Click this link to see details of our training partners, Tara Powell and Steve Carr.
- Everyone can take the free, NHS approved, 20-minute online training provided by the Zero Suicide Alliance. Access via this link.
- Ensure that the R;pple Suicide Prevention tool (free to schools, charities and families) is downloaded to all PC’s and laptop devices. Access via this link.
- Ensure every community location displays clear signposting to appropriate mental health and suicide prevention help services and resources.
For information and support concerning mental health or suicide related issues, access this link.