Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Suicide prevention

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (19:03): (822) Tonight I rise to provide an adjournment matter to the Minister for Mental Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to update my community on the next stages of the Victorian Suicide Prevention and Response Strategy and its implementation and impact on the constituents I represent in the Mordialloc electorate. Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, and it is a time to reflect on the people that are lost to suicide each and every year. Last year 801 ‍Victorians, sadly, took their own lives. That is more than two Victorians each and every day. We know that hundreds of people can be affected by someone taking their life in our local community, so this year’s narrative around suicide prevention is to change the narrative. It is to break down the stigmas and barriers that still exist in suicide prevention and encourage the help seeking that we hope for in our community for so many people.

The majority of people that we lose to suicide sadly have not interacted with a mental health service before. We know that 70 per cent of people that we lose are men and boys. When I have connected with Lifeline services and the work that they do, they tell me that two-thirds of help seekers are women and the overwhelming majority of their volunteers are women and girls. We need to change the narrative around the impact of suicide on our communities and the compassion that people show in our community, and particularly when we think of men and boys in our community. The compassion and love that people show for a mate in the community – if you ask someone to step up to help someone in their community, most people would not hesitate for a moment, but we need to show the same love and compassion for self so that when people are out in the community and struggling they get the services and support they need when they need it most.

Suicide, we know, in our community touches so many, and each and every one of us would have an understanding of the impact and the toll that that has and the visceral trauma that exists when people are impacted. So a strategy like this that sets out a 10-year agenda – I am really proud of this document, because it is on the back of a huge amount of engagement with lived and living experience, and I want to give a big shout-out to the Minister for Mental Health, who has been an outstanding advocate in this space; to the Department of Health; to clinicians; and to lived experience people across our community who have been impacted by suicide. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the work you have done to put into the strategy. It has teeth, it has accountability, it drives outcomes and it is a really aspirational document. In the words of people who participated in the launch today and the panel discussion, it is something that we can all be proud of. Through the despairs and impact of suicide in our community we can have hope, we can strive for a future of lowering the impact of suicide and the impact and the trauma that has on communities and we can live in the hope of a future that is not impacted by suicide, so I would love an update from the minister for my community