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New suicide prevention website features insights from staff and students

17/12/2018
Clare-Dickens

A new website to help people feeling distressed or thinking about suicide has been launched with insights from University of Wolverhampton staff and students.

4 Mental Health has launched the ‘Staying Safe’ website, offering free resources for anyone distressed, thinking about suicide or worried about someone they care about.

The website provides vital ‘Safety Plan' guidance tools jointly funded by NHS England, with templates and guidance video tutorials purposefully designed to help people through the process of writing their own Safety Plan.

Safety Plans are a key feature of the University’s award-winning Three Minutes to Save a Life programme, developed in collaboration with Connecting with People, which provides training to staff members to support students in distress.

Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Clare Dickens, along with nursing students and graduates from the University, provided valuable input into the resource.

Clare said: “I have co-produced safety plans in practice for many years now, and I am ever in awe of how much a safety plan means to people. For many a safety plan is quite literally their life line and social prescription of hope.

“Three Minutes to Save a Life advocates that everyone should have a safety plan, much like we have break down cover for our car - we don’t hope it breaks but we do have a plan for if it does. Every delegate who completes Three Minutes is supported and encouraged to consider their own safety plan; suicidal thoughts can beset anyone at any time of their life when it gets tough and it is essential that we drive home the message that they are an indication that something needs to change in our life, not that it needs to end.  

“The new 4 Mental Health resource has been created in order to enable accessible means of safety planning for those who struggle to share their distress with others, and or offers advice to those supporting others. I believe this resource on the Staying Safe website goes some way to ensure the consistency and quality, compassion and hope we aim for when responding to others and indeed ourselves when in distress.”

Jordan Bridges, 21, is a newly qualified Mental Health Nurse from the University. Her testimony is included on the website: “Often it’s the simple things people do which make a huge difference and can help save lives. Having a Safety Plan is key to this.”

For more information, visit the Staying Safe website: http://www.stayingsafe.net

Further information

For more information please contact the Media Relations Office on 01902 32 2736 or 01902 518647.

Date Issued: Monday, 17 December 2018

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