Strategy change needed: Lifeline Central West changes tactics on suicide prevention

This year, more than one million calls for help are expected to be made to Lifeline Australia’s national 13 11 14 crisis number, with LCW set to answer tens of thousands of them.

While LCW’s Bathurst, Orange and Dubbo sites will still operate as part of the national call centre, its staff are now out in the community directly targeting people before a crisis occurs.

Last year 2866 died by suicide – an average of eight people every day, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

LCW executive director Alex Ferguson said a person’s decision to take their own life was rarely spur of the moment, and in most cases was the culmination of many factors.

Those factors could include: domestic violence, marriage break up, excessive drinking, drugs or financial issues.

Mr Ferguson said if people can be better supported through these times then less suicides would occur.

“If we want to do anything with suicide, we need to go out into the community where the problems exists,” he said.

“In a civil society it is not an option to do nothing.”

LCW’s new proactive strategy includes workshops to train community and indigenous leaders, first responders, health care workers and teachers to better see the signs of mental distress.

“If you can see people are struggling you can reach out to them, but you’ve got to be trained to see the signs,” Mr Ferguson said.

“We’re training people to see the signs and to know what to do broadly when they’re confronted by these issues.”

In the past five months, LCW have delivered workshops in Bathurst, Orange, Mudgee, Coonamble, Forbes, Lightning Ridge and Walgett.

“It’s to take away the stigma, to say to people ‘you’re not the first and you’re not going to be the last’,” Mr Ferguson said.

He has also called on politicians to direct real money into suicide prevention programs, rather than just more academic reports on the subject.

“Spend the money to do what all these reports have been saying for the last 10 years,” Mr Ferguson said.

“Spend it in the community where the problems exist.”