Relieving the impact of suicidal behaviour on people’s lives. Figure 3: Draft framework to prevent suicide: an overview How the framework can guide activity to prevent suicidal behaviour The framework tells us about the outcomes our activities need to help achieve, to prevent suicidal behaviour. Within each pathway are four key outcomes that we need to achieve. These four outcomes relate to the three elements of pae ora and the four categories of risk and protective factors. Building positive wellbeing throughout people’s lives Building positive wellbeing involves enhancing and promoting all aspects of wellbeing, including cultural, economic, emotional, mental, physical and social wellbeing. It is about enhancing protective factors for suicidal behaviour, reducing risk factors and building people’s ability to get through difficult times and deal with life stresses. To build positive wellbeing throughout people’s lives, we need to: strengthen people’s wellbeing throughout their lives – building their ability to withstand adversity and cope when they are faced with adversity strengthen whānau, families and friends – strengthening whanaungatanga and positive close relationships with others strengthen communities – helping them to be supportive and provide an environment that encourages positive wellbeing build environments that promote wellbeing – making sure the physical, social, economic and spiritual environments in which people live promote positive wellbeing. Recognising and appropriately supporting people in distress Periods of severe distress are common and most people experience some level of distress at some point in their life. It is important to recognise when people are in distress and may need some support as they may be at greater risk of suicidal behaviour. By recognising when people may be in distress, we can support them appropriately sooner. To recognise and appropriately support people in distress we need to: provide appropriate care and support to people in distress strengthen the ability of whānau, families and friends to recognise and support people in distress strengthen the ability of communities to recognise and support people in distress build systems that seamlessly recognise and provide support to people in distress.
working with Pacific families and communities (eg, churches) to build leadership in suicide prevention working with whānau, hapū, iwi and communities to build leadership in suicide prevention. 6. Strengthen systems to support people who are in distress Make sure people in distress can get timely access to culturally appropriate care and support. Make sure mental health service users can get timely access to culturally appropriate care and support. Make available culturally appropriate and timely follow-up and support for individuals after a suicide attempt or self-harm, including for: Māori Pacific peoples. How this can help: Having timely access to appropriate and relevant care and support can reduce the risk of suicidal behaviour. So it is important to have systems in place to care for and support people in distress. Care and support can come from a range of sources, including whānau, family, friends, churches, communities and government agencies. Activities in this area could include: changing the opening hours of services that provide care or support to people in distress so that they are open when people need them developing apps to help people in distress to navigate services developing e-therapies and increase access to e-therapies developing online resources to help support people in distress encouraging emergency department staff to consistently follow best-practice guidance on caring for people who present to emergency departments as being at risk of suicide encouraging services to adopt trauma informed care to help people who have experienced repeated, chronic or multiple traumas expanding the peer support workforce making sure people are able to access appropriate services and support no matter where they live partnering with Māori led services to care for and support Māori who are in distress promoting ways to restrict access to means of suicide among people who are in distress providing accessible and culturally appropriate information about where people in distress can go for care and support providing telehealth services supporting people with alcohol and other drug problems training community members to identify and support individuals in distress and refer them to services that can help.