Police Scotland and the NHS support the launch of Highland's new suicide prevention strategy
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00:00 My name's Rob Shepard and I'm the Divisional Commander for Highlands and Islands Police Scotland.
00:05 So this action plan for suicide prevention is an incredibly important step forward.
00:10 Tragically we see a significantly higher number of suicides in the Highlands area than in other parts of Scotland,
00:19 averaging around 50 a year.
00:22 And so this action plan is a really positive step forward to collaboratively work together with police, local authority, NHS and third sector organisations.
00:35 Focus on a collaborative, preventative, person-centric response.
00:44 Identifying locations where people are more likely to commit suicide and working around those locations to make it more difficult,
00:52 and to provide the support people need when they need it.
00:56 My name's Anne Hunter and I work for Centred as a Project Development Officer.
01:03 I started Go With The Flow conversational art groups about three years ago now.
01:09 I was doing a wee stint at Gateway, working with homeless people, and I started running my groups there with the homeless guys and they absolutely loved it.
01:18 And I could see the benefits straight away.
01:21 It was initially to start social isolation to reduce that, and to increase confidence, self-esteem, health and wellbeing.
01:29 And a lot of the art you see displayed in there today was done by the guys in Ewing in the prison.
01:35 They absolutely love it.
01:37 There's long evidence that art is really beneficial, creativity of any sort is beneficial, whether it be music, writing, art.
01:44 For instance, I've worked with a couple of people actually with catatonic schizophrenia, who literally don't communicate with the outside world at all.
01:52 And as soon as I've given them any form of paintbrushes or cups of paint or whatever, you can see them moving into it.
02:00 So it's a real display of how creativity reaches the parts that other things don't reach.
02:05 It's just so therapeutic for people with mental health and addictions.
02:09 I think people with any kind of trauma, in fact, benefit greatly from art.
02:14 The creation of something outside of themselves that's part of themselves as well.
02:18 Tim Alston, I'm Director of Public Health for Energy Science.
02:22 There's been a lot of work that's been done already to develop the background to the action plan.
02:32 And really what we're talking about now is around implementation.
02:39 And we've got various actions around providing support and information to people at risk and to everybody within the population.
02:51 And also tackling issues such as stigma, so that we help people to be able to talk about mental health issues more and talk about suicide.
03:05 So that it's not seen as a taboo subject.
03:08 My name is Emily Stokes, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of MikeySci.
03:12 So the action plan is a combination of a year's work through the Highland Suicide Prevention Steering Group.
03:18 We've been partners on that and been at all the workshops and contributed the lived experience aspect of that.
03:25 And just shared the work that we do to help inform the action plan.
03:30 And just where we think from our experience, from people that we're seeing, just where we feel that the needs are as well right now in Highland.
03:37 Well the hope obviously is that suicide figures in Highland will decrease.
03:43 Suicide figures are lower than they were in 2019, but we've had the cost of living crisis that we're currently in.
03:50 We've had Covid, we've had Brexit, all of these things have impacted on people's mental health.
03:55 But the hope is that it's a focus, it's a focus for the works that actually we're focusing our efforts into the key priority areas.
04:04 So hopefully that will make a difference.
04:06 Patrick Mallory, Facilitator for the James Support Group.
04:09 I'm Dr Nicola Appert, Consultant Clinical Psychologist with James Support Group.
04:14 Six years ago, actually last week, we lost our son James to suicide, which is why we started this group up.
04:20 Because at that point there wasn't any help at all for us in the Highlands, absolutely none.
04:25 As a group we've been going for five and a half years, simply because there wasn't any help for us or any of the family and friends of James.
04:32 And every suicide affects around about 135 people.
04:36 But it's not just the direct family and the friends, it's also the intimate family, the aunts, cousins, nephews, etc.
04:43 And people who work with the person, people who are next door neighbours, it affects a hell of a lot of people.