I'm Elizabeth Peyton, and I'm the project lead for Everymind's Mindframe program, which supports people to communicate about issues like suicide, mental health concerns, and alcohol and other drugs. We support people who want to talk about an issue like suicide. Primarily, we do support the media who are talking to the most people and the most often about these issues. But we also support people who might be supporting the media as well. So that might be giving an interview or sharing information with them, or it's for people who might be doing their own types of public communication. That might be through social media channels, through podcasts, or other types of public-facing community events. So our program is based on a whole heap of evidence that looks at the impact that public communication about suicide has in the community. So some ways of talking about suicide publicly can actually be quite harmful. For instance, it can increase suicidal behavior in the community, increase suicide deaths or attempts. But we also have some evidence emerging that shows that other ways of talking about suicide can be preventive or positive, whether that's reducing stigma or reducing suicide rates as well. There's some important things to remember when we're talking about suicide. If we're talking about suicide deaths, we should always frame those as a tragedy. We know how we talk about those deaths can really impact people who've been bereaved by suicide, as well as those in distress. So we want to make sure we're using language that doesn't glamorize a suicide death, for example, making it seem like a solution to the problems that person was experiencing. We also want to make sure we're taking care about how we talk about that person. We don't want to use language that makes it seem like they're a criminal, that they're selfish, or that they're stupid, for example.
So that type of language we have to take care with. When we're talking about suicide death, we also need to make sure we're not sharing details about suicide methods, or if a person has died in a public location, not giving details about those either. When we do share those details in our communication, we know that it can increase attempts or deaths using those methods or those sites. If we want to prevent suicide, we can't just talk about suicide deaths, though. We also need to hear other types of stories, stories of survival, which can be really important for people in distress to hear. So we want to hear stories of how people have gotten through a crisis, what worked for them, what helped them get through, what services they used, the people that they spoke to, the things that helped them survive. Those kinds of stories can also model that behavior to those that are in distress and need a way through. It helps them to know that it's possible to get through that crisis. So when we combine all of these stories, when we've got a real diversity of stories around suicide, those can play a really powerful role in suicide prevention. So we have a whole lot of resources to help people navigate how to communicate about an issue like suicide publicly.
That includes some resources for people with a lived-in living experience of suicide called Our Stories Matter, and lots and lots of different tips for how to go about telling a story. We also have language guides, the words to use or not use, things that can help other people in the community feel that it's safe to talk about what they're experiencing. You can access all of those resources on the Mindframe website at mindframe.org.au. We know from the evidence that how we talk about suicide is incredibly important. It can have positive impacts, but it can also have negative impacts. So having language or communication guidance in this toolkit is a really good foundation for communities to have these important discussions about suicide while they're implementing the National Suicide Prevention Strategy locally.