New project to boost Wheatbelt community safety through mental health and suicide prevention education

A new mental health and suicide prevention “safety net” will be established in the region by Holyoake’s Wheatbelt Community Alcohol and Drug Service. The Wheatbelt Suicide Prevention Project, funded by the WA Primary Health Alliance, aims to increase mental health and suicide prevention literary and education, encourage help-seeking behaviours and support community mental health advocates. In 2020, 381 people died by suicide in WA, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. On average more than one person dies by suicide every day in the State. Between 2016 and 2020, WA had the highest age-standardised rate of suicide among Indigenous people in the country with 20.9 deaths per 100,000 people. The suicide prevention project is centred on four key pillars — primary care, education and training, grants and funding and identifying community champions. The primary care pillar aims to provide suicide prevention training and resources to GPs, practice managers, nurses and pharmacists to encourage help-seeking behaviours and identify vulnerable individuals who are in distress. The education and training pillar is designed to provide mental health literacy and training to professionals, frontline workers, volunteers and community members to help them identify vulnerable people and help them access support. Grants of up to $5000 will be available to local governments, organisations and community groups to host grassroots suicide prevention training initiatives and activities such as R U OK? Day events. The community champions pillar encourages local residents with a passion for mental health and suicide prevention advocacy to access training, education and resources to continue their work in the community. Wheatbelt Suicide Prevention coordinator Jo Drayton said the project was designed to enable health providers, community groups and individuals to help others. “If we have GPs who have increased literacy and greater capacity to respond to people in distress, if we’ve provided educational and training to para-professionals, frontline workers and volunteers then they are better equipped to support someone who might be distressed,” she said. “If we’ve got local governments rolling out wellbeing or suicide prevention initiatives and then we’ve got our community champions doing the same, then what we’ve done is created this Wheatbelt safety net where we have professionals and community members working together with the Wheatbelt suicide prevention project to increase individual, family and community safety.” Ms Drayton, who has worked in suicide prevention and mental health for more than 20 years, said there were still high levels of stigma around mental health in the region. “We know historically that individuals in the Wheatbelt have faced, and continue to face, high levels of stigma associated with help seeking behaviours,” she said. “Individuals can be reluctant to go to their GPs or to contact a primary mental health professional if they are distressed. “These community champions can be a bit of a conduit between community members in distress.” Ms Drayton said the community champion pillar aims to provide individuals with the ability to identify people who may be in distress and connect them to mental health services. “We know in the Wheatbelt we have mental health services that are located in Narrogin and other larger towns but we don’t have mental health professionals in all of the surrounding smaller communities,” she said. “What the community champions are is someone in the community that can be the eyes, the ears and has those links to professionals and can help improve community safety but can also be an advocate for mental health. “What we would hope would be an outcome in local government authorities, working alongside community champions, who are then being supported by professionals in the Wheatbelt to increase community safety.” For more information, contact Jordyn.Drayton@holyoake.org.au Lifeline 13 11 14 Beyond Blue 1300 224 636