Life Promotions Program

Raising Awareness and Reducing Stigma

One of the ways to engage in suicide prevention is to share knowledge and understanding. The Life Promotion Program does this in a number of different ways by:

• Networking locally with other agencies
• Giving presentations at workshops and conferences about the Life Promotion Program on a local, state and national level
• Attending seminars and conferences to network with others, share ideas and keep abreast of latest information
• Reading research
• Collaboration with local service providers to deliver suicide prevention and mental health activities and programs
• Working with local schools and within other settings for young people to raise awareness about the issue of suicide and mental health.
• World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10 provides an opportunity to raise awareness about the problem of suicide in Central Australia, how it impacts on family, what strategies are in place to address this issue and what people can do if they or someone they know is at risk of suicide. It is also an important healing ceremony for local communities.

Suicide is like a huge net of stress, trauma, pain and grief pulling on many people’s lives in our country. This net is interwoven in complex ways, made up of personal, biological and psychological factors, and also influenced by economic, social, cultural and familial circumstances.

“No single suicide theory seems to account for all the empirical results. However, many of the social and economic indicators associated with high suicide rates may point to some kind of reduced social integration (eg, due to significant social or economic changes), social inequalities, and different social meanings of, or opportunities for, suicide.” (Caroline Maskill and Ian Hodges. “Explaining Patterns of Suicide: A selective review of studies examining social, economic, cultural and other population-level influences.” Social Explanations for Suicide in New Zealand: Report 1. (Wellington, New Zealand Ministry of Health. 2005): ix

Being caught in the net of suicide is being caught in something complex. For a lot of the time and for a lot of reasons, this net is difficult to speak about. And when something is not often spoken about, it remains unidentified, which makes it harder to address.

But there are many people who are exploring how this net works so that we can discover how best to reduce the influence it has and how people might be able to get free from it as well.

To try and effectively address the net of suicide, the people involved in the Life Promotion Program try to get hold of this information, through reading, research, talking to people on the phone, meeting with people and going to conferences.

We hope that the more we can understand this information, the more effectively we can work.