The impact of losing a young person to suicide is immediate and traumatic.
Unfortunately, as a region, we know this feeling all too well.
Families, schools and communities in our area are reeling following a number of tragic deaths of young people to suicide this year - events that will forever echo strong and never be far from their minds.
There is no doubt that COVID-19 is having a serious impact on young people.
They are disproportionately affected by this pandemic, experiencing major disruptions to school, work and study, changes to social and family life and increasing loneliness.
Modelling from University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre, released earlier this year, shows the impacts of mental ill-health from COVID-19 are significant and long-lasting and, alarmingly, that there could be a spike in suicides.
It is time to talk.
It is time to acknowledge that this is an issue both here in our region and more broadly across various parts of Australia, and now is the time to do the work to ensure we can turn the tide on these devastating losses.
There is no doubt that COVID-19 is having a serious impact on young people. They are disproportionately affected by this pandemic.
As a first step as parents, carers and friends of young people, it's important we're having conversations about how they're feeling and we're proactively checking in on their mental health.
Talking about mental health can be incredibly daunting, particularly if you suspect someone is in serious distress, but it's crucial to have these conversations to let young people know there is support and help available and importantly, that there's hope.
headspace recommends a three-step process to follow in navigating these conversations, which is particularly helpful if the idea of talking with your young person is feeling really hard.
The method is referred to as 'Notice, Inquire and Provide' and is often provided as a resource from headspace to parents and carers after the event of a suicide of a young person in a school community.
The first step is to notice changes in behaviour that might indicate a young person is having a hard time coping. This might be changes in eating, sleeping, withdrawing from things they usually liked to do.
The second step - often the most difficult for parents and carers of young people - is to inquire. Use sensitivity and compassion when checking in with a young person on how they're feeling and what's going on for them.
It's crucial to allow space to listen to what they're saying without judgement or criticism.
Finally, it's important to share information from trusted sources and offer avenues of support, such as talking with a relative or friend, GP or a service such as headspace.
I was encouraged to learn recently of the NSW government's promise of a new suicide register to be live by October to help health professionals find and prevent emerging suicide clusters across the state, something for which headspace has advocated for many years. This is an incredibly promising step forward and our hope is other states will follow this lead.
Having real-time suicide data across all of Australia would mean that in the event of a death by suicide, services can be activated to support those affected to try and mitigate risk of contagion, similar to the work headspace currently undertakes with communities.
Even when these new measures are live, proactively managing our mental health needs to be a priority, particularly in times of heightened stress.
I strongly encourage young people, family and friends to seek support if they need help getting through this time either for themselves or someone they're worried about.
In-person and telehealth services are available from local GPs, psychologists, and mental health services like headspace.
As a community, we've never experienced anything like COVID-19 but I'm hopeful we will emerge from this time as a community that comes together to help each other, to understand our good fortune to live where we do and to perhaps not take simple things for granted.
Maybe we will come out of this time with greater empathy for those who are vulnerable and more compassion and generosity towards others.
Perhaps we will we have had more time to re-calibrate, and know what's important to gain clarity and direction for the future.
