Key recommendations

The recommendations for Yorke Peninsula were:

Improving emergency and follow-up care for suicidal crisis

• Promote and expand aftercare services in the region to provide follow-up care for those who have made a suicide attempt.

This includes providing continuity of care, coordination, across services and strong follow-up. • Implement best practice care guidelines within the emergency departments and deliver training to emergency department personnel and hospital staff. • Employ specialised mental health trained nurse practitioners to be based in emergency departments. • Provide locally developed resource packs to patients, family and careers who have been in contact with crisis care. • Develop a plan of how more support can be provided for young people under the age of 16. • Create a ‘no wrong door’ approach.

Using evidence-based treatment for suicidality

• Improve information sharing between services, families and carers. • Deliver Advanced Training in Suicide Prevention (ATSP) to clinicians including doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists. • Encourage the use of Telehealth and e-Mental Health tools.

Equipping primary care to identify and support people in distress

• Provide further training opportunities for GPs and practice staff. • Equip practices with a ‘stepped care’ model allowing GPs to easily identify patients in need of support and tailor a treatment plan that is right for them. • Encourage the development of local multidisciplinary networks. • Create linkages and collaborations between services to ensure streamlined referrals and aftercare support. • Implement improved consent tools to enable better sharing of information between health services, as well as other support networks (e.g. family and friends).

Improving the competency and confidence of frontline workers to deal with suicidal crisis

• Provide targeted education and training for accident and emergency staff to refresh or upskill and build their capacity to support the community. • Build awareness across first responders of local referral pathways. • Develop a common, appropriate language across agencies and sectors. • Encourage participation of frontline workers in multidisciplinary events such as Expert Insight forums.

Promoting help-seeking, mental health and resilience in schools

• Encourage the delivery of evidence-based programs, promoting help-seeking behaviours and building resilience. • Provide suicide prevention training to all education staff. • Provide Advanced Training in Suicide Prevention (ATSP) to school counsellors. • Review school referral pathways to ensure at-risk students are being connected to appropriate care. • Ensure information about local support services and programs is visible throughout local schools.

Training the community to recognise and respond to suicidality

• Implement Question Persuade Refer (QPR) strategies, targeting community members and health professionals alike. • Provide training opportunities for the community to help recognise and respond to suicidality. • Develop a local resource that provides people and agencies with a greater level of knowledge and information about who to contact when people are in crisis. • Develop an online portal of services and agencies that is easily accessible. • Work with local employers to include information about local support services in their employee induction process. • Engage with local government to provide community support through venues, events and staff resources.

Engaging the community and providing opportunities to be part of the change

• Develop a high profile creative advertising campaign targeting suicide prevention with the inclusions of language, stigma reduction and help-seeking education. • Establish suicide prevention representatives within organisations to promote help-seeking and suicide prevention awareness. • Ensure information about support services and programs are accessible and visible in the local community 24/7. • Develop posters on local service options that are visible and accessible across the community. • Proactively communicate and engage with the local community using safe, targeted and consistent messaging to build awareness of how to help someone who is facing a suicide crisis and provide clear actions that people can take to make a difference in their community.

Encouraging safe and purposeful media reporting

• Facilitate Mindframe training for media and key spokespeople, including mayors, politicians, and others. • Encourage proactive use of media to ensure promotion of support and resources.

Improving safety and reducing access to means of suicide

• Remain vigilant about emerging trends in means of suicide. • Facilitate real-time electronic data collection by agencies to report and measure the level of suicidal crisis in the community.