
This little bub is a child of the Kimberley region which has among the nation’s highest suicide rates – photo, Gerry Georgatos
Each suicide is not only a personal tragedy but dramatically affects the lives of families. With one person reportedly suiciding every 40 seconds around our world, suicide has become a public health issue. With each suicide it is estimated that there are scores of attempted suicides and tens of thousands of intentional self-harm hospitalisations.
According to the World Health Organisation, globally, suicide is the second leading cause of death of people aged 15 to 30 years.
In Australia, suicide is a leading cause of death, particularly among the descendants of its First Peoples. With Australia, there are on average seven suicides a day. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander youth are dying by suicide at among the world’s highest rates.
Risk factors are many but in the end there is a breakdown in oneself to deal with what have become chronic life stresses. But among different cultures these life stresses are perceived differently, with varying degrees of priorities and expectations around them, and therefore suicidal ideation rates and suicide rates vary significantly.
Another major risk factor that can be demonstrated is that within countries with minorities that experience discrimination, within these minorities there are higher rates of suicidal ideation and of suicide.
If we can see and demonstrate these risk factors and causes to suicidal ideation and suicide then it is logical to argue that we can do something about reducing the prevalence of suicidal ideation and reduce the incidence of suicide. But despite all the sectors of society that are required to intertwine and work to educate, to assist and to support others, foremost we need the media and the politic of the nation to establish the foundations of suicide prevention. We must relentlessly strive for this but we must not place all our expectations in this hope.
Suicide prevention is made up of education, of the normative that should make up a healthy life, of establishing prevention, intervention and postvention practices and services on a 24/7 basis. Postvention is also a process of prevention – tackling familial and community distress and the contagion effect. Improving a community’s social health and wealth is predominately a governmental deed, a political deed but in educating into a community a contextual sense of the meanings of life, of well balanced expectations of what it means to have a good life, of understanding attainable goals and in putting paid to the pernicious notions of ‘failure’, are deeds that can be achieved by community settings and institutions. This doesn’t happen overnight but neither does it take too long to make a real difference once these community settings and localised institutions are empowered.
Social change is often dependent on political will but often the political will is a reductionist one or totally skewed to the absurd but this dangerous dependency on the political will of a nation can be defied and social strategies can be managed by the arbiters of local level knowledge and influence.
The majority of premature and unnatural deaths, which include, suicide are indeed preventable, and research evidences this. Despite all this, low-cost education, prevention and intervention are the low end of the scale of priorities for governments. This is a tragedy. Suicide prevention must be a community’s highest priority and we can work to this, we can roll this out, because where this has occurred, suicidal ideation and suicide rates have dramatically decreased. With governments it is a tougher gig, but one that we have to keep at and with the more communities empowered the voices grow and hence we have the movement towards a cultural shift, and well, governments do tend to respond to these cultural shifts.
It is important to listen to people. It is imperative. It is a dangerous myth that people who talk about suicide do not mean to do it. For goodness sake, people who talk about suicide are in trouble, they are screaming out for help. People need people. Suicidal ideation journeys grief, anguish, anxiety, depressions, the sense of failure, identity crises, the sense of hopelessness. The majority of people who are talking about ending their lives are thinking about doing this. There needs to be calm and patience but concomitant with a sense of urgency, even if this means just being there, even if a word is not shared – but people need people. We may not get our words right but what we must get right is that the other understands, even in any silence, that we are there for them.
In vulnerable communities, or right down to vulnerable members in family units, we need to empower a 24/7 conduit to those whom can help, support, educate, improve and save lives. I will be writing near daily on the ways forward. We have a duty to one another to immerse ourselves in what it takes to sustain a healthier and happier society.
Governments must take note of the above, because once they realise the importance of what I am writing about, maybe then more within governments will prioritise the high stake issues ahead of the lower stake ones.
Lifeline’s 24-hour hotline, 13 11 14, provides counselling and advice to anyone in crisis.More reading and links:
The extensiveness of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicides – 1 in 20 | The Stringer
Preventing suicide – “no greater legacy” | The Stringer
Understanding Australia’s suicide crises
Suicides, high among overseas born and second generation Australians
Child suicidal ideation on the increase
It is racism killing our people – suicides born of racism
Kimberley suicide rate – one of the world’s highest – Yiriman is the way to go
My Country – But look how I am forced to live
What will it take to end Aboriginal disadvantage, the inequalities and the various crises?
What sort of Australia is this? Seven homeless children in an asbestos slum
Six homeless children fighting for a better tomorrow
Quality of life for Australians 2nd only to Norway but for Aboriginal Peoples 122nd
Dumbartung convenes suicide crisis summit
Suicide attempts among women on the rise
Australia’s Aboriginal children detained at the world’s highest rates
Culture should not be denied – change needs unfolding, not impost
Everyone in the Territory doing well, except for Aboriginal Peoples
Australia’s Aboriginal children, the world’s highest suicide rate
Wes Morris slams government suicide prevention programs
How many more suicides will it take? How many more deaths?
Hopelessness in suicide riddled communities
More government neglect of Aboriginal children
In identity lay the answers – ATSI suicides
$25.4 billion spent on Aboriginal disadvantage is a lie
Beagle Bay to State Parliament – Farrer speaks out on suicides
Government to address Aboriginal suicides
996 Aboriginal deaths by suicide – another shameful Australian record
996 deaths by suicide – one in 24 die by suicide
Australia’s Aboriginal suicide epidemic – whose child will be the next to die?
77 Aboriginal suicides in South Australia alone
Kimberley’s Aboriginal peoples old at 45 years
Australia, the mother of all jailers of Aboriginal people
Tumult of death – 400 suicides in last three years
30 suicides in the last three months as we wait for promises to be kept
Suicide crisis – genocidal numbers
Suicide crisis – from tragic to catastrophic
Suicide crisis needs real funding and actions
Hundreds more will suicide if we wait for 2015
Nothing will be done about suicides crisis
Elders across Australia say governments need to listen to them on how to address youth suicide
Suicides – western society and ancient cultures clash
If we are serious about suicide prevention
Australia’s suicide crisis should not be played down – the media must highlight it
From my father’s death bed to the must-do to end the suicides
Governments promise on ending suicides must come good now
More confirmation of what everyone knows, was suicide prevention inadequate
The must-do need to listen and trust if suicides crisis is to end
Working together – mental health and suicide prevention roundtable
Break the taboo around suicides, we reduce suicides
Suicide crises born of Australia’s inhumanity
Suicides crisis linked to incarceration
Wes Morris urges funding for cultural methodologies
The betrayal of our children – the Northern Territory
New project offers hope to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides
Depression and suicide prevention must be top of the agenda this century
World Suicide Prevention Day – suicide takes more lives than war
Western Australia – 1 in 13 in a jail, a bullshit state of affairs
Yiriman saving lives in the midst of the Kimberley’s suicide crises
The smaller a community, the less likely a suicide
Overcoming disadvantage report shows disadvantage not overcome
600 Black deaths in custody by 2025 – jail numbers to soar
Get out of the way – Aboriginal suicide rates will drop
A nation shamed when the solution for its children is homelessness
Christmas, a period of vulnerability for many
Stop peddling lies $30 billion spent on Indigenous disadvantage is a lie
To end our trauma government must stop the assault on our people and our culture
In Australia there is the Aboriginal rights struggle
Kirstie Parker, Mick Gooda say enough of fine words – close the gap a big fat lie
Highest child removal rates in the world worse than Stolen Generations
Other media:
A nation shamed when child sees suicide as the solution
Families urged to look after each other as suicide rates soar
Response to rash of suicides in remote WA regions
ABC 7:30 Report – Deaths in custody and jail rates
Radio:
WGAR News: The extensiveness of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicides – 1 in 20: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer
https://indymedia.org.au/2015/02/27/wgar-news-the-extensiveness-of-aboriginal-torres-strait-islander-suicides-1-in-20-gerry
Contents:
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Suicides are preventable – here is what we must begin to do
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: The extensiveness of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicides – 1 in 20
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Preventing suicide – “no greater legacy”
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Understanding Australia’s suicide crises
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, Green Left: Aboriginal suicides rise amid worsening conditions
* Analysis / Opinion: Susan Allan, WSWS: Australia: Eleven-year-old Aboriginal boy commits suicide
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: “It is racism killing our people – suicides born of racism”
* Analysis / Opinion: Sue Lannin, ABC News: Government Indigenous suicide prevention programs are a failure, NT elder David Cole says
* Audio Interview: Let’s Talk’s Tiga Bayles interviews Gerry Georgatos about the continuing increasing rate of suicides
* Audio Interview: Graham Backhaus, The Wire: Suicide crisis – Indigenous People [Featuring Mr Gerry Georgatos]
* WGAR Background to Suicide and Self-harm in First Nations Communities
Aboriginal Suicide
WGAR News: New report indicates one in twenty First Peoples deaths classify as suicide: Gerry Georgatos, CAAMA
https://indymedia.org.au/2015/05/23/wgar-news-new-report-indicates-one-in-twenty-first-peoples-deaths-classify-as-suicide
Contents:
* Audio Interview: CAAMA: New report indicates one in twenty first peoples deaths classify as suicide [Featuring Gerry Georgatos, veteran human rights campaigner]
* About CAAMA: Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA): http://caama.com.au/
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: People strengthening people – focus on suicide prevention
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Suicides are preventable – here is what we must begin to do
* Bio: Gerry Georgatos – The Stringer
* Media Roundup: Linksunten Indymedia: How an Australian Aboriginal family turned their sister’s death into a youth suicide prevention group
* Report: Culture Is Life: Promoting community led solutions to Indigenous youth suicide: The Elders Report
* Crisis Support – Talk to Someone – 24-hours/day 7-days/week:
Lifeline – Crisis Support and Suicide Prevention: 13 11 14 https://www.lifeline.org.au/Get-Help/
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 https://www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au/
Beyond Blue – Talk it through with us: 1300 22 4636 http://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/get-immediate-support
* WGAR Background to Suicide and Self-harm in First Nations Communities
* Project: Ground Up Community Support Network: Gija Language and Culture Classes