Suicide First Aiders share their experiences
As part of East Ayrshire Council’s ‘Here to Listen’ suicide prevention strategy, forty of its volunteer Suicide First Aiders attended a support group meeting recently to share their experiences of helping to provide suicide interventions to 132 people, and to find out about new suicide prevention and wellbeing resources.
Since its inception in December 2018, the Here to Listen strategy has gone from strength to strength and the Council now has over 300 suicide first aiders embedded throughout its workforce and communities. Although there have always been national suicide prevention strategies such as Choose Life and now the United to Prevent Suicide strategy, when the instances of suicides continued to increase within East Ayrshire, Health and Safety Manager David Doran decided he wanted to do more and Here to Listen was established.
To date, First Aiders have provided suicide interventions to 132 people and those are only the ones that the Council knows about.
During the meeting, the Suicide First Aiders shared their stories of how they have supported so many people in crisis within the Council, their communities or within their own organisations and how grateful they are for the supports in place to help them.
Provost Jim Todd joined the meeting to personally thank each and every Suicide First Aider. He said: “We are so very grateful to all of our Suicide First Aiders for their passion, dedication and willingness to help others. What they do is incredibly humbling and we know that it saves lives.
“They use their training every day, probably without even realising it, and are making a huge difference in their workplace, their communities, and with family and friends. They all have our heartfelt thanks for the important work that they do.”
Jane McKie, Lead Officer for Here to Listen, said: “Of the 132 interventions, 59 were female and 73 were male. We know from national statistics that men are more likely to take their own lives. But these figures show us that more men are reaching out for help and that what we are doing is having a real and positive effect. We are constantly raising awareness of our resources, raising awareness of our suicide first aiders and promoting our amazing ASIST courses. We are getting people talking about suicide and their overall wellbeing and it’s working.
“Our vision in East Ayrshire is to have wellbeing champions, mental health first aiders and suicide first aiders in every team, every organisation, every charity, every community group – everywhere and anywhere we can to ensure that anyone who needs help can get it. No-one ever has to feel like they are on their own with nowhere to turn, with their only option being to end their life. And I know that together we will achieve this.”
If you are struggling, you are not alone. Please reach out to the Suicide First Aiders by visiting www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/suicideprevention
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