Louise Leslie from Choose Life Services (CLS) was our guest speaker at the January 27th meeting. CLS is a non profit, privately funded community service seeking to offer hope specifically to those struggling with life issues that may lead to suicidal thoughts and behaviours and to those who are impacted by suicide.
They offer free workshops and counselling, suicide awareness and intervention. Although CLS has on-going connections with Churches of Christ it runs its programs without religious overtones. CLS also runs on a non medical model and provides no clinical services. They do not provide diagnosis, just day to day support and counselling. CLS does refer clients to doctors and psychiatrists where appropriate. All their staff has counselling qualification, and they have three trainers on the books who regularly conduct 2-3 day courses.
Choose Life Services offer comprehensive employee assistance services at workplaces where they will become familiar with the people involved, the work culture and the morale at the workplace.
Standby Projects are arranged for people affected by suicide where one person is assigned as a point of contact. This means the people being helped do not need to tell their story to every support service each time as the Standby officer handles most tasks. Tasks such as helping with funeral arrangements, pet care, anything to do with helping a family through the process of recovery.
At the base of Mount Roland CLS has a retreat centre where people can come for ‘time-out’, a free service not only for suicide related clients, but also for people from referred agencies. It is build from donations and run and maintained by donations.
In 2008 alone 74 people committed suicide, the majority were people in the 33-44 bracket. The number for Australia was 2191 deaths with the majority in the white collar 45-54 year old male population. Figures could be as much as 10x bigger and some organisations even predict 40x greater if counting car crashes and drug over doses which are not immediately related to suicide.
Tasmanian Mental Health services are regarded by CLS as ‘broken’, which is contributable to Tasmania being regarded as rural and remote by health professionals and it is hard for Tasmania to retain psychologists, psychiatrists and the like. The 6-8 weeks waiting period for a consultation is often bridged by CLS.
Most people with suicidal thoughts do not want to die, they just want the pain to stop. This pain is usually associated with typical social calendar events such as Christmas, birthdays etc. when they feel isolated. We can all help by talking to neighbours and colleagues. Speak to them, talk about their hopes and dreams.
Happy faces despite the serious theme of the night.
