Suicide Prevention Day

Wednesday, 10 September 2014 05:14

An opportunity to get the community talking openly about suicide and mental health.

OXFORD COUNTY - The Canadian Mental Health Association is asking locals to reach out and ask for help as part of World Suicide Prevention Day.

Director of Crisis and Outreach for the Oxford County Branch, Lynn Wardell says it's important for everyone to talk about suicide in order to get rid of the stigma so they can focus on prevention.

"I know with the recent passing of Robin Williams that has helped a lot within the last few weeks for sure with people starting to talk about it but just to recognize that hey, it's World Suicide Prevention Day, what do you think that means? Go from there. See where the conversation leads. What can we do in the community to try and prevent that in the future."

"About 4000 Canadians die by suicide every year which is kind of a startling statistic if we think about how many people we are losing to suicide because obviously it's a preventable death. Hopefully people will reach out and get help if they are feeling hopeless or helpless or having thoughts of suicide."

Wardell says everyone needs to do their part to keep the conversation about suicide in the forefront.

"We do offer some different groups here for general people here in the public. We have Mental Health First Aid Training and we also offer Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training as well as Safe Talk, so those are all training that just regular people not trained to work in mental health, if they want to know more about it and want to know how to help somebody should they come across somebody."

According to CMHA, women are three to four times more likely to attempt suicide but men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women.

Wardell says the CMHA does have a 24 hour crisis and outreach line at 519-539-8342 for those in need of immediate help and adds that suicide is the second most common cause of death among young people.