Grants enable help for people at risk of suicide

More people in the South West will be trained to recognise the signs from people at risk of suicide.

Enable South West received a $19,000 grant and GP Down South received $39,000 to deliver suicide prevention training from the State Government’s Suicide Prevention 2020 strategy.

GP Down South chief executive officer Amanda Pollar said there would be four courses run across the South West for up to 20 people per workshop.

“The target group is for people with mental health or at risk of mental health issues, including parents, carers and family members,” she said.

“The benefit is to improve mental health literacy and awareness in the community and to respond to people who need help, as well as reducing the stigma.”

She said an advantage of the workshops was early intervention because mental health issues would be identified sooner.

Enable South West quality assurance and service development manager Michael Finn said its workforce had tripled and the organisation needed to provide more training to meet the growing demand for its services.

“We do a lot of work with people who are vulnerable and we work to make communities more resilient,” he said.

“This grant will enable us to train staff to recognise people who are in distress and hopefully reduce the rate of suicide in the community.

“At first we will be training our staff over two days in a general mental health training workshop. Then in November two staff members will go to Perth for a week and will come back with more knowledge to train more people in the South West.”

Mr Finn said the organisation wanted to be self-sufficient and the grant would train more people to pass on skills to others.

Bunbury MLA John Castrilli said on average one person died by suicide each day in WA and the grants would help reduce the numbers.