OUR APPROACH

Goal
To make Canberra suicide-free, one life at a time

Principles 
Community
Effort
Sustainability
​Empathy
​Zero Donations

Methods
The R4R Rag
The Weekly Runs
Writing 4 Resilience
Community Feedback
Merchandise
Event Crashing
Event Hosting
​Concept Copying

Our approach is reviewed and assessed annually, and on an as-needed basis. Whilst we use our goals, principles, and methods as guiding forces in every decision we make, we are not immune to evolution, and these may be adjusted moving forward.

WHAT WE KNOW

We've saves lives. We can save more.​
When I read news articles about someone who’s taken their life, I always find this inner-voice screaming why? Every suicide I read about appears to be unexpected, and the descriptions of the deceased person always appear to be unaligned with someone in crisis, and separate from some people unwilling or unable to share their pain with others, I think there is another reason suicides are so often unexpected.

​99.99% of people any given year in Australia won’t take their life. So perhaps, part of the reason we see suicides as unexpected is because it’s incredibly rare. When we adjust this figure to people attempting suicide, 99.75% of people any given year in Australia won’t attempt suicide. Suicides and attempted suicides are definitely priorities for our society, but one reason they always kick us in the teeth, in addition to their tragic nature, is because of this rarity, so we’re left asking ourselves…how, and why, has this happened?… but we’re too often asking this question after the fact, not before it.

​Having lost my Dad to suicide in 2010, it certainly felt like a curve ball at the time. With the benefit of hindsight and particularly through my studies, reading, and my writing, there are narratives that can be constructed to explain why my Dad took his life. But this is almost irresponsible because I can never be certain, I can only believe that some things probably caused his death… finding out WHY someone takes their life is incredibly difficult, and perhaps it’s a question that will be answered down the road… but finding out HOW someone arrives at a mental state to think taking their life is appropriate, at least to me, appears far more achievable. And if we can figure this out, we can help people before they arrive at this point.

​I need to preface by saying that there are exceptions to the below, but I believe that this framework captures most of the journeys toward suicide. I also need to preface that the catalyst is filled with innumerable scenarios, but they all share a common theme; causing pain that is perceived (either consciously or subconsciously) to be significant.

​Catalyst
There are certainties in life, and one of those certainties is that at some stage, we’ll feel rubbish. Every struggle and pain is relative to the individual experiencing it, and whilst we might be able to objectively rank some struggles, each person can lay claim that one moment in their life was the hardest thing they’ve been through. There’s no skirting this fact… we might be able to use perspective to increase gratitude that our pain isn’t worse, and this can mitigate the pain, but it will always be the worst pain we’ve felt. As mentioned, these pains can be ranked from objectively horrible things to go through, to mounting pressures of responsibility, financial stress, or other ongoing stressors, all the way to diseases of modernity, where because our lives are the best they’ve ever been, ripples can feel like tsunamis. The point is, any struggle can be a catalyst for someone to fall into despair or rely on their coping mechanisms.

​Avoiding all catalysts is futile. Avoiding some catalysts is necessary. There are certain hardships that no one should have to endure and there are certain hardships that we, or our society can be reasonably expected to solve over time. But ultimately, because struggles are relative to the individual experiencing them, they will always exist. Because of this, we need to prepare for pain, not avoid it.

​Coping Mechanism
Our coping mechanisms are key to how well we navigate the throes of life. They are made up of habits we resort to when placed under pressure and they can either lead to growth or harm. Ensuring our coping mechanisms are made up of habits that ultimately lead to more positive outcomes is key… but not everyone has them, and nobody has coping mechanisms that are 100% positive. Coping mechanisms can be things like what we eat when we’re stressed, whether we exercise, whether we isolate ourselves or reach out to friends, whether we drink alcohol, how much we sleep, what activities we resort to… work, social media, chores… The list goes on, but they are our behaviours during tough moments and they are directly relevant to how well we survive through these moments. I read a fantastic book that summarises these coping mechanisms as part of our resilience shield, which is made up of six layers (outlined below)

It’s important to note that even if we have our resilience shield as strong as possible, we can still be overwhelmed by the pressure of life, and may need help from the two safety nets outlined below.

Community Safety Net
Unlike how the community provides meaning and purpose above (social layer of the resilience shield), the community also acts as a safety net. From people checking in with someone after they missed a training session or didn’t turn up to work, all the way to someone reaching out to a community member to help, or be helped, the community safety net acts as a support structure. Furthermore, the community safety net is incredibly powerful because people being caught in the safety net will experience greater purpose within that community, making them more likely to contribute to that community, consequently strengthening the coping mechanisms of all involved.

​Societal Safety Net
The people who either don’t have a community or fall through the community safety net can be caught by society’s safety net. These are things like the general health system, psychologists, and crisis centres. These mechanisms are solutions designed to fill gaps identified by the community and the government. They do incredible work and they are necessary for a suicide-free society. Despite their necessity, they are further downriver, and their importance within a long-term lens, in my opinion, is secondary to empowering people to be self-sufficient and strengthening the community safety net.

​Despair
If someone experiences a hardship, doesn’t have the appropriate coping mechanisms, and isn’t caught by either the community or societal safety nets, over time they might find themselves in despair. Once in despair, their lifestyle, their thought patterns, and their perspectives will begin a downward spiral towards hopelessness, a feeling of being burdensome, and loneliness, which is where people can justify suicide as a viable option. If you’re in this position right now, I promise you there’s another way, and you can start along that path by contacting someone right now.

At the very least, Lifeline can be called on 13 11 14.

​So what does this tell us?
It is impossible to remove struggle altogether because it is relative to all other inputs. Therefore, instead of avoiding pain, it reiterates the importance of preparing for pain, by building sustainable coping mechanisms. It also reiterates the importance of preparing communities to catch people who’s coping mechanisms have failed, in either propping them back up or redirecting them to the appropriate societal safety nets. And lastly, it reiterates the importance of having a large enough societal safety net to catch all those who fall through the cracks. Furthermore, I think it’s imperative that we start looking down the road to prevent problems in the future, and in my opinion, that looks like building individual and community resilience.

​Now, this might seem all hunky dory, beer and skittles, and perhaps the way in which we achieve this is more complicated than it appears, but the concept is there in my opinion. If we build resilience in individuals and communities, we are reducing the stress on the societal safety net and increasing our capacity to cover up the cracks people are falling through. Additionally, it’s important to note that as we save more lives, the lives that still need saving are likely to be more nuanced and difficult to save. To use an analogy, it’s akin to shifting a pile of sand, 95% appears straightforward… you just stick the shovel in and move it to the wheelbarrow… It’s hard work, but we know what we’re doing… as we get closer to the bottom of the sand pile though, we start to notice how hard it is to pick up each granule, and if we’re going to pick up every single bit of sand, we start to need things like vacuum cleaners and lint rollers. While saving lives is more difficult at this stage, this difficulty is associated with having saved lives before. It is a derivative of success… whilst it can appear frustrating, it’s ultimately a good problem to have.

WHAT WE THINK

Group Psychology

When someone seeks professional help, it can be months before they see a shrink, which is completely unaligned with the sense of urgency that prompts someone to seek help. They are required to see a GP first, create a Mental Health Plan, and then book into a Psychologist. If someone were to bypass the GP and Mental Health Plan step, you can bet your bottom dollar that they won’t have bottom dollars to spend afterward… because it’s so bloody expensive! So, when we look at the problem outlined above; lengthy wait times and expensive services; is the solution increasing sector capacity and improving efficiency?​

​I have a good mate who is a personal trainer, and several years back we were talking about how he could maximise his revenue. The reality facing personal trainers is that they only have a finite number of hours per week and it is difficult to scale their work. In that conversation, he told me that he would identify clients of similar ability and offer them a cheaper rate if they’d accept being in a two-person personal training session. The content would be the same because the clients would be of a similar ability, the price would be less per person, and there would be an added sense of value due to a joint pursuit of a common goal. The difference for my mate is that whilst each person was paying less; together, they were paying more, and my mate now had one extra hour to get a new client.

Why can’t we do this for psychologists?

Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) is where our trauma can be used to grow as a person. PTG can come from using our trauma to help others, and if psychologists are able to identify similar clients and combine their sessions, these clients can help each other, whilst continuing to be helped by the psychologist. This would increase the number of free hours for new bookings and it would increase the dollars received per hour of operation for the psychologist. The latter would either incentivise the psychologist to organise more group sessions (increasing capacity further) and/or it would provide additional money to provide discounts for those who are unable to afford the sessions.

There’s a key assumption here; that group psychology sessions would be beneficial to the client. I believe it is based on all I’ve read, and I’ve seen it firsthand within the R4R community. But I’m not naïve to my lack of professional experience and I’m strongly encouraging anyone with that experience to contribute to this discussion.

There’s another half-baked thought simmering away here too… Can the presence of ‘group psychology’ sessions infer to the general public that sharing struggles with our peers is an acceptable thing to do? Wouldn’t we be sharpening the toolset of being able to communicate our pain to others? Wouldn’t the creation of a group of people with similar circumstances be beneficial?

Community Counselling

Communities are not only a source of meaning for people, they can act as safety nets when individual resilience fails us. Our society is filled with different communities, and if we assume that they do act as safety nets, then we must accept that the infrastructure for saving more people from suicide already exists. So, if we're able to upskill our communities to better catch people who stumble, we're also reducing the stress on the mental health sector down the line. This isn't a new idea, and it's one that's been proven in post-disaster care.

"We used to assume that people need professional counselling,” says Julian Eaton of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a veteran in post-disaster care. But it turned out this was not so. Rates of mental-health problems usually doubled after a calamity. But few people needed a psychiatrist. Most got better with simple, appropriate help that anyone could provide. Known as “psychological first aid”, it is something that can be taught in a matter of hours."

​"Disaster relief has taught that non-specialists can be trained to treat mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety, which affect 15-20% of people in any given year. The idea, known in the jargon as “task-shifting”, was “born out of necessity”, says Peter Ventevogel of unhcr, the un’s refugee agency. When psychiatrists are too few, he says, it is best that they work with those most in need, such as the suicidal." (The Economist, 2019)

If it's true that non-specialists can effectively treat mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety, then it's feasible that if we can upskill our communities, we can reduce the strain on mental health services by the amount of people experiencing mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety. But this increased capacity could allow our health services to be more proactive instead of reactive, which could compound these improvements... not to mention the increased depth of connection that our communities would experience as a result of the interaction.

Writing for Resilience

If Community Counselling can help people respond to those struggling, then writing for resilience can help people comprehend their struggles and better communicate them. Seeking help, asking if your mates are okay, or highlighting that it ain't weak to speak, our society's efforts to reduce stigma and promote discussion are well intentioned and equally as important. However, if my own journey is anything to go by, so many of us aren't ready to talk about our struggles... but clearly, this isn't sustainable.

Writing forces us to view our thoughts a minimum of three times; when we think it, when we write it, and when we read it again. And it's through this process that we can expose errors in our thinking, comprehend our situation more objectively, and become more confident in our ability to navigate our circumstances and communicate their struggles. Much like someone improving their physical ability over time through exercise, we can improve our mental ability over time through journalling.

As more people journal and as more people begin communicating their struggles, we are not only reducing the mental burden on so many, but we are improving the content of discussions around mental health, subsequently improving our society's approach. It's frustratingly simple; the stoics wouldn't shut up about it, shrinks shout it from the rooftops, and I wish I knew it from the get go. Writing has been the most effective tool in my belt and I think if we had as many people journalling for their mental health as there is people exercising for the same reason... we'll go a long way toward achieving our goal.

WHAT WE NEED TO FIGURE OUT

Preventing unnecessary hardship

Suicide is a symptom of mental health, and mental health is both a cause of suicide, as well as a symptom of other factors. As I said above, there are certain hardships that no one should have to endure and there are certain hardships that we, or our society can be reasonably expected to solve over time. Hardships such as homelessness, discrimination, preventable health issues, and countless more, must be addressed if mental health suffering is to be reduced to a level where individual resilience can manage the majority of of those affected.

Protecting our most vulnerable

It is unreasonable to expect that individual resilience and community counselling can address more extreme mental health issues and severe mental illnesses. We need to empower our researchers and social services to target these areas and deliver appropriate treatment. Excuse the analogy, but we can view our goal as moving a pile of sand... the first 90% of shovel loads are easy... but as the sand gets more sparse, we need more tools than just a shovel to pick up the rest.

WHAT WE'RE DOING ABOUT IT

The R4R Rag
A weekly newsletter from a community trying to make Canberra suicide-free by 2033

Visit the Rag

The Weekly Runs:
Monday 6:15am, Wednesday 6:00pm, and Friday 6:15am at The Dock on the Kingston Foreshore (see disclaimer below)

Writing 4 Resilience:
A group of writers learning how to communicate their own struggles, giving the blueprint to others.

Visit W4R

Community Feedback:
Regular feedback opportunities for our community, to maintain our community-led ambitions.

Merchandise:
Giving our community a uniform to represent resilience.
​
Event Crashing:
Identify running events to attend and take part.

Event Hosting:
Hosting our own running events and milestone parties
​
Concept Copying:
Encouraging other communities to be established and/or understand the role they can play as a safety net.

We are always looking to add sustainable and effective methods to this list

Disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Running for Resilience is an unstructured concept that has been embraced by the Canberra and Mental Health communities. If you choose to take part in the weekly runs, you do so at your own risk. Running is a physically active sport and you should always seek advice from your doctor beforehand as to any pre-existing injury. Children under the age of 12 are the responsibility of their parents or guardians and must be accompanied by them at all times. Running for Resilience webpage and social media owners and operators or those organising the weekly runs are not always present at the weekly runs. They do not accept responsibility for any injury, loss or damage sustained by any participant.