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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-10-30 Daily Xml
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Self-Harm Indicators

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:08): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, representing the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, a question regarding self-harm indicators.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: When I recently visited the United Kingdom I had the privilege of meeting with the senior staff of the University of Manchester's Centre for Mental Health and Risk, which conducts the Manchester self-harm project, otherwise known as MaSH. This longstanding project helps to inform the United Kingdom's national indicator for self-harm but also particularly focuses on specific facets of the Manchester population which has a 33 per cent non-Anglo background and incorporates a significant lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community. My questions are:

1. Will the minister outline what, if any, actions his department has taken to identify the levels of self-harm in different demographic and geographic communities and to inform indicators across the whole state?

2. What efforts are being taken by the government to support community groups established to assist people who experience self-harm and/or attempted suicide such as Anglicare's A Cry For Help?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation) (15:10): I thank the honourable member for his most important questions. Again, he comes in here with some very important information, obviously derived from his extensive contacts around the world and this country in the area of suicide prevention and harm prevention. They are important, particularly as they do relate to a community that I am very close to, the LGBTIQ community, where we know, for example, that particularly with young people and particularly young people in rural and regional areas, where they do not have an ability to get support through their own community, they do sometimes seek to harm themselves. I am always very impressed with the honourable member's questions on these matters and I will take them to the minister in the other place and seek a response on his behalf with alacrity.

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