If you were to hear today that someone had died by suicide, what do you think your response might be?
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, there’s a stigma attached to mental health distress and thoughts of suicide. And this stigma is preventing people from seeking help.
There’s still a perception that suicide is something that impacts other people, yet about a third of Australians know someone who has died by suicide, or attempted suicide, in the past 12 months.
Suicide is part of the human condition. It’s a natural human response to overwhelming suffering.
Any one of our us, our family, our friends, our co-workers or neighbours, could find ourselves spiralling into suicidal distress, faced with more adversity than we can bear.
So the words we use when we talk about suicide are huge