Community shaped suicide prevention event

The Derby Suicide Prevention Network (DSPN) is responding to Karen Middleton’s article “Lobbyists dominate mental health sector” in the October 6–12 edition. Ms Middleton quotes Professor John Mendoza, a suicide prevention consultant, as being her source of information. The DSPN was formed in 2015 by Derby community members as a body to consult with the local community, raise awareness of suicide and self-harm, but more importantly to raise awareness of available support mechanisms by putting local faces to agencies and coordinating visiting agencies. Unfortunately, Professor Mendoza, who runs a professional consultancy business for suicide prevention and visits Derby to deliver one of his programs through the school, has thus far not seen the value in introducing himself to the network, so has little background on which to make comments. The event titled “Moving forward 4 life” was intentionally run on September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day. The nature of the event, which was a basketball comp, dance-off and hoop-shooting comp, was informed through extensive local consultation with community leaders and elders who instructed the DSPN to engage the kids in living, and provide them with fun, sport and recreation activities, which are always a big hit with the majority of local kids. Also identified in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project in the table of success factors – Selective at-risk groups – young people. The guest speakers were all locals known to the children present, which was the idea of putting a local face up there. The DSPN has identified that there was a gap involved around the stigma over the use of mental health services whether from the local Aboriginal medical services’ Social and Emotional Wellbeing Unit or Kimberley Mental Health and Drug Service. A quote from the article: “It was just entirely inappropriate,” said Mendoza. “I just thought, ‘Wow, that program was funded by the federal government’… It was completely out of context and disconnected to what the community needs.” This is a rather amazing statement from a short-term visitor to the community since the event was shaped entirely on what the community had requested. The DSPN is made up of community members who have ties and relationships that allow the members to engage with the locals who are both directly and indirectly touched by suicide at a level that a fly-in flyout consultant such as Mendoza will never reach. There was no federal funding involved in the staging of the event, nor was there a visiting government-funded social worker as a guest speaker.