I welcome the government’s commitment of $1B to fund more mental health services, but I’m concerned about the lack of funding for suicide prevention.
As a community member with lived and living experience of suicide, I’m active in the suicide prevention space. I’m a strong advocate and I also work as the Lived Experience Lead for Suicide Prevention Australia.
There are numerous factors other than mental illness that may lead to suicidal distress. Suicide Prevention Australia’s Community Tracker consistently shows that cost of living, housing insecurity, social isolation and loneliness, and relationship breakdown all contribute to suicidal distress, and in many cases, dying by suicide. Around 50% of people that die by suicide are engaged with mental health services and about 25% of those who attempt suicide don’t have a mental health condition.
Where does that leave us? It leaves a huge gap in our community of unwell, unsupported people. If community members aren’t using the mental health services that our government has committed to provide, they are experiencing distress and receiving no support. That’s where the gap proves to be dangerous, even to the point of suicide.
Within the National Suicide Prevention Strategy released in February this year, a critical enabler for preventing suicide is embedding lived experience. From a lived and living experience perspective that’s a good thing. Without the knowledge, insights and expertise of people with a lived or living experience suicide, we can’t hold workplaces or communities to account, nor will the suicide prevention initiatives be compassionate or relevant, and they simply won’t work for the people that need support.
So, what can we do? We can advocate to government. There is a Strategy, but where is the funding to implement and embed it? People with lived or living experience of suicide and their allies must raise our voices and make it known to government that people dying by suicide in our community every day will continue without specific suicide prevention funding.
Jennifer Waltmon is the Lived Experience Lead at Suicide Prevention Australia
