Suicide prevention advocates are urging the government to pass a federal law requiring all draft policy measures be checked against their suicidal ideation risk, arguing that measure could have ensured the Morrison government’s robodebt scandal never occurred.
The Suicide Prevention Australia CEO, Nieves Murray, said national legislation was the missing piece in the draft national suicide prevention strategy the government had published as “advice” on Tuesday, to mark World Suicide Prevention Day.
“The strategy provides a blueprint, but the thing that would cement this for our country is the implementation of a suicide prevention act,” Murray said, pointing to a similar move in South Australia.
“By having a suicide prevention act at the federal level, what we will see is this issue of suicide prevention being taken as a whole-of-government approach enshrined in legislation such that it cannot change, should there be a change of government. It’s very difficult to undo that.”
Murray said robodebt exemplified how a legislative check could have “changed the path for a number of people who died by suicide as a result”.
“If we’d had a suicide prevention act in place before that program was rolled out, the appropriate safety measures would have been put in place – or [it] would have been modified in the way it was rolled out – and we would have saved lives.”
Murray criticised the government’s decision to publish the draft strategy as “advice”, instead of committing to it as a strategy, despite having undertaken widespread consultation.
The draft strategy says addressing the social factors contributing to suicide – such as loneliness, childhood abuse, and financial stress – is critical to prevention. Such stressors can lead people to feel “trapped in their circumstances” and people need to be able to feel they can live a meaningful life, with hope for the future, it continues.
Any suicide prevention strategy “must do more than support people who are experiencing suicidal distress – it must also reduce the likelihood of people experiencing suicidal distress in the first place,” it says.
Experiences of childhood abuse and neglect, alcohol- and drug-related harm, and intimate partner violence against women were associated with almost half (48%) of suicide deaths and self-inflicted injuries in 2019. These socioeconomic factors and related stressors known to elevate suicide risk must be addressed, the draft says.
“Similarly, economic uncertainty, social exclusion and loneliness, chronic pain, and family separation or bereavement were associated with increased suicide risk,” it says.
“Reducing the impact of such stressors can prevent people from experiencing suicidal distress by reducing their sense of being trapped by circumstances and by promoting a sense of agency and hope for the future.”
The strategy has been informed by people with lived experience of depression and suicide.
Anna Bernasochi, suicide prevention director of LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation Switchboard Victoria, said recent public debate over census questions on sexuality and gender had further highlighted the suicide risk in those communities.
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“Issues such as the census data detract us from the issues that are deeply affecting our communities,” Bernasochi said. “Far too many LGBTIQ+ people are impacted by suicide and there is not enough commitment and action.”
Suicide is the main cause of death for younger Australians and was behind more than one-third of deaths among 15- to 24-year-olds in 2022. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than the non-Indigenous population.
The draft strategy comes as medical journal The Lancet published a series of six articles on Wednesday calling on governments to more comprehensively address the impact of poverty, debt, addictions, homelessness, abuse, discrimination and social isolation on a person’s decision to consider suicide.
“Clinical treatment services are critical for people in a suicidal crisis, but upstream measures that address social factors must also be included in national suicide prevention strategies to prevent people reaching crisis point,” an introduction to the series says.
Prof Jane Pirkis, director of the Centre for Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, authored one of the papers and said: “Addressing these more upstream factors is likely to lead to sizeable reductions in suicide rates.”
The public has until 27 October to give feedback on the government’s draft strategy.
