It is a sobering statistic – more than 2500 Australians end their lives through suicide every year – nearly twice the number killed on our roads.
Now Sue Murray, head of Suicide Prevention Australia (SPA), a leading suicide prevention body, is determined to halve this figure over the next decade.
With a stellar background in community foundations, including the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF), the NSW Cancer Council, the Australian Medical Association (NSW) and Leukaemia (NSW), helping to raise millions for research and awareness, she is well placed for this challenge.
“I enjoy growing organisations and am particularly passionate about health and wellbeing and saving lives,” Murray says. “It’s been clear to me in the three years I’ve been with SPA that the community doesn’t know the impact that suicide has.”
As well as the number of Australians who die as a result of suicide, an estimated 65,000 plan to take their own lives and many hundreds of thousands more think about it every year, she says.
These are people with a “lived experience”, which means those who have attempted suicide; those who have lost someone from suicide; those thinking of taking their own lives and people who care for someone who is suicidal.
Under Murray’s leadership, SPA has worked to improve the quality and focus of the suicide prevention message and applied a collective impact approach to the work they do.
SPA is the lead agency of the National Suicide Prevention Coalition of more than 30 organisations, which formed in 2012 to find a path to the ambitious goal of halving suicides
The coalition is helping to build and facilitate partnerships to change attitudes and behaviours relating to mental illness and suicide, and to assist the healing for people with lived experience of suicide attempts and suicide.
“We are most concerned about bringing government, business and the not-for-profit sector together with people with lived experience and designing the services that meet the needs of those affected by suicide,” Murray says.
One of the key facilitators of the coalition is MLC, one of the National Australia Bank (NAB) group of companies, which offers support through the MLC Community Foundation.
Murray says the NAB group has helped to provide guidance and expertise on a wide range of different areas.
“We work closely with the foundation on anything from designing resources to determining the parameters we need to put in place to measure the economic costs to the community of suicide.
“These are hugely important tools for an organisation like Suicide Prevention Australia and our relationship gives us the opportunity to tap into a highly skilled workforce.”
MLC Community Foundation chair Lara Bourguignon says the foundation has invested $7.8 million in grants and programs aimed at improving mental health outcomes for all Australians over the past eight years. This includes more than $3.3 million of philanthropic capital to Lifeline Australia.
“These grants address one of the most critical issues within Australian society; mental health,” Bourguignon says. “We provide monetary and business support to a range of community groups involved in solving or supporting Australians experiencing a mental health condition.
“MLC Community Foundation chose to assist SPA because it was the peak body for a coalition that would speed up results in aiding the improvement of mental health in the community.”
She says the MLC Community Foundation 2015 grants program had been based on a mental health theory of change with the acronym HOPE, which targets specific mental health outcomes.
HOPE signifies the following: help in understanding the brain to develop new treatment strategies; open collaboration that creates collective impact; the power of innovation to reach out to those in need and enterprise solutions to provide employment for people with long term mental health issues.
Bourguignon says it has been wonderful working with Murray and SPA: “She has a very real ability to bring people together and enact meaningful change. One of the goals of SPA is to make it more comfortable for people to talk about mental health issues. We need to educate people and embrace some of these challenges rather than push them under the carpet.”
Some of these messages that Murray is quick to share are disturbing, but clearly need to be addressed. For one, Murray says a fifth of suicides happen soon after people leave the healthcare system – with the highest number of those deaths occurring within a month.
“We need to make sure that when people who have suicidal behaviours enter the healthcare system, they are given the right support that suits them and leave the healthcare system with a coordinated plan for ongoing care.”
She says one of the greatest needs is to ensure better training is provided for healthcare professionals, teachers, sporting club officials, pharmacists and non-online social networks involved in this eventual support.
Another harsh fact is it is men, especially middle-aged males, who outnumber women in taking their own lives by three to one. Murray says meaningful employment is a critical protective factor and it is important to provide meaningful job opportunities.
“With meaningful employment comes a home, financial stability, healthy relationships and reduced alcohol use and drug use. All critical protective factors in reducing suicide.”
Murray stresses the need to find new ways of improving the employment environment and removing discrimination against people with mental health issues.
While an employer may not necessarily know if an employee had attempted suicide, by removing discrimination people “would be more likely to tell their employer they need time off, or that they are feeling stressed”.
She says social media also helps, with more than 65,000 on SPA’s Facebook who are “very supportive of one another”.
Murray says the comparison between suicide prevention and what was done about the road toll is stark.
When Australia’s road toll peaked in the 1970s, the nation - appalled at the carnage and senseless waste of life - acted with significant investment in education, infrastructure like better roads and legislation such as seatbelt laws and RBT checks.
Murray says: “This multi-pronged, long-term approach to dealing with a vital issue works - and that is what we need for suicide.”
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
