WE MUST ALL PLAY ROLE IN PREVENTION OF SUICIDE

MORE than 3000 young people between 2006 and 2015 took their own lives according to research from the Medical Journal of Australia.

It is a statistic that should shock every member of our community, and it’s an urgent wakeup call about an illness that is proving more deadly than ever and ripping at the fabric of society.

One third of those 3027 young people aged 24 and under had not been receiving any mental health care at the time of their deaths, according to the study, which experts have attributed in part to a lack of co-ordinated efforts to strengthen service systems at critical points of entry, such as primary care and at emergency departments.

There is clearly a long way to go when it comes to organised and effective prevention of suicide in Australia, and while there is much more work to be done at the institutional and government level, everyone can play a role in suicide prevention.

Supportive social relationships, strong connections to good health services and a sense of purpose can play a powerful role in helping people overcome the powerful triggers that can lead to suicidal behaviours, which include stressful life events, trauma and mental illness.

One person who knows the unimaginable pain of losing a loved one to suicide is Cowboys premiership winner Antonio Winterstein, whose brother Francis took his own life in 2015.

Francis was only 19 when he died, leaving a hole in the lives of countless other people who he left behind.

But Antonio knew first-hand the pressures Francis had faced.

“The hardest pressure for me growing up was the pressure of masculinity,” Antonio said.

“It is just the culture and with that culture comes phrases like … man up and harden up that just contributes to that stigma of not speaking up.”

The onus is on anyone struggling to find someone they feel they can trust and talk to, and on the other side of the coin, it is vital that people listen to anyone who approaches them seeking a chat.