Motions

Suicide Prevention

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges the development of the suicide prevention networks around South Australia and encourages the rapid expansion of this successful initiative;

2. Calls on the Weatherill Labor government to enhance its efforts in the field of suicide prevention, both in programs and funding, and as a matter of urgency progress the development of its 2016-2020 State Suicide Prevention Strategy;

3 Urges the Weatherill Labor government, in the development of its 2016-2020 State Suicide Prevention Strategy, to note—

(a) the establishment of a Ministerial Suicide Prevention Council by the Western Australian government;

(b) the commitment by the Victorian state government of $4.9 million to suicide prevention programs specifically for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning (LGBTIQ) community;

(c) the establishment of a suicide register by the Queensland state government to enable better research into the causes and prevention of suicide, and the direction of funding to programs which will reduce the rates of suicide in areas discovered as 'hot spots';

(d) the implementation of suicide prevention training programs for front-line police officers and public transport employees by the New South Wales state government; and

(e) the development of a dedicated Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy by the Tasmanian state government.

(Continued from 14 October 2015.)

The Hon. T.T. NGO (20:20): The South Australian government is committed to the 'South Australian Suicide Prevention Strategy 2012-2016: Every life is worth living' (the strategy), and to developing a further strategy for 2017-21. I thank the Hon. John Dawkins for the motion and for raising the profile of this important work. I also acknowledge the tremendous support the member gives to suicide prevention networks and the many organisations working in suicide prevention in this state, as well as raising awareness in this place.

Suicide is a tragic event, the effects of which ripple through the community, devastating those in its wake. The government remains committed to building resilient individuals and strong communities through the strategy, and recognises that some groups are particularly vulnerable to suicide, including the LGBTIQ community. The government ensures access and support for these vulnerable groups through mainstream services and tailored programs where possible.

Being connected to community is a powerful protective factor to suicide, and it is for this reason that we are so committed to the development of suicide prevention networks linked to local government. Fourteen suicide prevention networks have been established in South Australia to empower the community to address suicide in the community. It is vital that the networks work locally to break down the stigma around mental health and suicide.

It is also vital that the networks develop connectedness, bring education in mental health first aid to the community, highlight where help is available, and develop ways to support those bereaved by suicide. It is important that we ask, 'Are you OK?' It is even more important to be asking, 'Are you really OK?' These networks assist the communities to start those conversations. Further networks will be established more rapidly with the assistance of a second suicide prevention project officer recently appointed to the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist.

The strategy was developed through extensive local consultation, resulting in an approach which incorporates postvention. This has been recognised both nationally and internationally as innovative in the recognition of the consultation process and the importance of the postvention work. The development of a 2017-21 strategy will occur in 2016, again with community consultation, investigation and incorporation of national and international best practice principles, the investigation of activity and the results of other states' strategies to address suicide.

South Australia continues to strive for best practice which saves precious lives in the most effective way and commits just under $1 million for suicide prevention, in addition to the provision of mainstream health and mental health services.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (20:25): Dignity for Disability will, of course, support the Hon. Mr Dawkins with this motion and congratulates him on the initiative and the ongoing work that he does in this very important area of suicide prevention. I know that promoting positive mental health is a mutual passion that Mr Dawkins and I share.

In speaking to this motion I would like to note a couple of points. First, that there is indeed a need to have specific strategies to prevent suicide, suicide attempts and self-harm in particular communities—to name one, the LGBTIQ community, as outlined in this motion—given the high rates of suicide attempts and completed suicides in that community, particularly among young same-sex attracted identifying people.

I would also say that there is a need for a lot more focus on other groups as well. I think people with disabilities, particularly people who may have recently acquired disabilities through accident or injury and may be feeling in need of mental health because of that could also benefit, I believe, greatly from peer mentoring programs to show them that they can recover, they can live meaningful lives, and to bring them out from that cycle of depression and the loss of identity that can come with acquiring a disability through an accident—particularly for young men who are in motor vehicle or motorcycle accidents.

I would also argue that within the LGBTIQ community—bringing it back to that—that one way we could help stop the negative mental health that some people in that community experience is by legalising marriage equality in this state and in this country. The more messages we send to people who are same-sex attracted that they are not viewed as equal in our community and not worthy of the same rights as other people in other relationships could, of course, have a very negative impact on their mental health.

Secondly, mental health challenges more broadly but in particular borderline personality disorder or BPD is a leading cause of suicide in this state. I think I am correct in saying that as many as 10 per cent of people with a BDP diagnosis will end their lives by suicide. That is those who complete suicide and not just those who attempt it. Of course, repeated self-harm incidents, as well as repeated suicide attempts, are all too common in people with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis.

I recently attended the annual BPD conference where one of the speakers there was a woman who had lived with a BPD diagnosis but now has recovered to the point where there is, as I understand, no evidence of her still having that condition. She had survived (this is me going on my memory) I think as many as 14 suicide attempts in her lifetime, and she would have only been in her mid-thirties, I would estimate. So there is amazing pain and anguish that these people with BPD experience without adequate support services and understanding of their very genuine and very serious condition. However, there is also a resilience that can be found and nurtured with the proper support and understanding in the community.

That is why Dignity for Disability continues to urge the Weatherill Labor government to acknowledge this and incorporate into their suicide strategy 2016 to 2020 plans for a statewide borderline personality disorder service. This has been repeatedly requested by Dignity for Disability and my parliamentary colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks on behalf of the Greens and, in more recent times as well, by the Hon. Stephen Wade as shadow health minister.

To not improve the services for all mental health, but in particular a mental health condition as misunderstood and maligned as BPD, as part of a suicide prevention strategy would be negligent, I believe. We know that we have lost several young people, several young South Australians, to suicide this year alone who had a BPD diagnosis. My office was advocating for a number of those young South Australians whom we have now lost due to the lack of support available to help them recover from their BPD.

Modern medical research will tell you that it is possible to recover from a BPD diagnosis, but the more stigma there is around BPD, and mental health more broadly, the harder it is to show people that we can recover from mental health challenges. There is an old adage that I think rings very true that 'It's hard to be what you can't see.' The less support people have to go out and recover, to come back to the community, to contribute to the community, the more stigma there will be and the more cost to the state coffers through emergency department presentations, self-harm, suicide attempts and so on.

I certainly do not want to negate the human side of suicide by talking about the economics of it, but when it comes to government I think it is important, and when it comes to parliament I think it is important, that we acknowledge the economic benefits as well as the societal benefits to quality of life that can be achieved when we properly support positive mental health and prevent suicide.

That is exactly why Dignity for Disability has been very proud to call for a mental health commissioner in South Australia, one who, obviously, has the appropriate professional qualifications, but who also, I think more importantly, has some independence from the strictly medical model of mental health and can actually go out into the community and be willing to listen to people living with poor mental health and their families, where appropriate, and talk to them about what supports in the community would enable them to feel connected, to feel responded to, to feel respected and help them get out of the cycle of crisis that often leads people to the extent of poor mental health that leads them to consider suicide.

This leads me nicely to my next point, and these will be my closing remarks. I think it is really important that we as a parliament promote the reasons why people might choose to consider suicide, to sadly attempt, or even more sadly, complete suicide. It is my opinion, from the young people I have worked with and supported both in my personal and professional life, that when a person is feeling suicidal, for whatever reason, they do not actually want to die; they want the pain to die. Unfortunately, they have reached a point where the pain they are experiencing is so severe that they cannot separate themselves from that pain and they cannot see a future without that pain, and so they begin to genuinely believe that the only way to end that pain is to end their lives.

Often we hear people in our community talking about suicide as a very selfish act. To an extent, I understand why people think that, because, of course, when a person attempts or completes suicide it has a big rippling impact on their family, their friends, their workmates and their broader community, but I think it is really important to remember that for many people when they are feeling genuinely suicidal, their self-esteem is so low that they probably do not think that they are doing anyone a disservice by leaving the community.

I think it is really important to change that perception and that conversation away from one that talks about selfishness and being greedy and cowardly by attempting suicide toward one that actually understands that this is a person who does not want to die but just wants their pain to stop, and how can we support them do that and help them build a future and a sense of self that can be free of that pain, because it is possible.

But it is very hard when the overarching messages you are receiving are that you are cowardly or selfish or just need to get over what you are feeling. We need to move beyond that to a conversation that looks at suicide as a genuine issue, one that can be addressed, but addressed holistically and with the proper level of understanding about what a person who is experiencing suicide-like ideation is going through and what is the outcome that they actually want, and that is a life, but a life that is free of pain.

Perhaps with those few brief comments I will wrap up, but reiterate that Dignity for Disability strongly supports this motion, particularly for those in groups who are experiencing a higher rate of suicide attempts than is the general community, particularly the LGBTIQ community and particularly young people in rural areas.

I know that I said I would wrap up, but as I am speaking I am reminded of a friend of mine who is a very young man from Mildura. If my memory serves me, he has lost either four or five friends this year alone to suicide. It has got to the point where now even he, as a 20-year old man, says he cannot go to any more funerals in his life. He has seen too much loss and death and sorrow already at the age of 20. I cannot imagine what that must be like.

Certainly there is a need to move beyond this conversation that looks at suicide as something selfish and cowardly to a genuine response to crisis, crisis that is possible to get out of as long as we continue these conversations and have the appropriate support services within government and the appropriate conversation within the community.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (20:37): I am pleased to rise to conclude the debate. I thank very much the Hon. Kelly Vincent and the Hon. Tung Ngo for their remarks. In particular I note the sincerity with which the Hon. Kelly Vincent speaks in her support. She has done that many times before. I note her particular highlighting of the borderline personality sector, and that is a very valid example of many different sectors or subsectors within our community that are at great risk of extreme self harm and, of course, suicide.

I thank the Hon. Kelly Vincent for her sincere support, as I do the Hon. Tung Ngo, who I think also recognises some of the impacts of suicide in many of the migrant and multicultural communities in this state whose culture around the taboo of suicide perhaps still has some way to go. I get told that quite frequently when I go to multicultural groups. I say, with great respect to the Hon. Tung Ngo (and I know that the department would have provided some of that information for him), and I say to the minister and the government, that the $1 million that he quoted (I think it is actually $1.1 million) is chicken feed. Compared to what other states are spending, it is actually chicken feed. That is no disrespect to the Hon. Tung Ngo because he is sincere in his support of what I do, but for the government to say that they are doing everything they can is a real exaggeration.

However, I am always heartened by the increased awareness that various people in the community are now, I think, being exposed to in relation to these matters, particularly members of parliament. When I started on this passion of mine 10 or so years ago, there was one now departed member of our party room who thought he was whispering and said, 'I wish Dawkins would shut up about suicide.' He was not whispering, of course, and he will remain nameless.

The reality is that more and more people have started to realise the impact that suicide has on the community, and it is pleasing that more members of parliament are finding that out. On Saturday morning, when I did the annual Walk Through the Darkness organised by Living Beyond Suicide, part of AnglicareSA, from Tennyson to Henley Beach, leaving at 5 o'clock in the morning, I was joined by the Hon. Paul Caica, member for Colton, who was representing the minister. I did invite some of my Liberal colleagues to join me on that walk. I think the Hon. Rob Lucas particularly was washing his hair at that time or something like that.

I was very grateful that the Hon. Paul Caica I think had his first experience of the movement that is around suicide prevention and particularly, in this case, around working with the families who are bereaved by suicide. I am very grateful that the Hon. Paul Caica yesterday took the opportunity to put down his particular experiences onto Hansard in the other place—that is valuable.

I think many Labor members in this house and in the other place need to get that message to the current Minister for Mental Health who, as I have said here before, has never turned up at a suicide prevention event that I am aware of. I am quite sure he has never done it, so that is a great pity. He needs to lift his game—I have said that before—or let someone else take over the mental health portfolio.

Can I say I think it is appropriate that, given the nature of the debate that we are having on the matters to do with the police force, as I said earlier, the Police Association of South Australia gave some terrific evidence to the Occupational Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Committee recently in our inquiry about mental health and suicide prevention in the workplace. The Police Association provided some terrific examples of the impacts of not only when police officers suicide or attempt to take their life but also the constant part of their duties when there is a suicide, as police officers have to attend and have to make reports for the Coroner, etc.

I think none of us probably think in great terms about that being part of a police officer's role, but I have in this motion, of course, highlighted the fact that the New South Wales government has made sure that all operational police officers get training in dealing with a suicide in the community and how to deal, in the right language, with the families who are impacted. I commend the Police Association of South Australia for their commitment in that area as well.

I thank members for their support. I know that, while not many have spoken on the motion on this occasion, there are many who commend me to continue this work.

Only today, we had a question to the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council about some of her achievements. In her days as the minister for mental health she actually was not very complimentary about my work in this area. At that stage, the government did not want to know about this. In the early days, I did a lot of work to get groups going in the community, without any government help. I am delighted that now there is that help. It is terrific to work with the 14 groups that are out there, as the Hon. Mr Ngo said, and there are more being developed. Hopefully, I am going on Sunday to the launch of one in the Mid Murray area and I recently attended the launch of one on the Yorke Peninsula at Stansbury.

The fact that the appointment of the additional officer, that the Hon. Mr Ngo spoke about, took some 15 months from the commitment in estimates is just a joke, so we need to make sure that more pressure is put on the government to actually get serious about this matter. I thank the chamber for supporting the motion and I commend it for completion.

Motion carried.