Saving Lives through Suicide Intervention

Creating Suicide-Safer Communities

ASC provide suicide intervention solutions across South Wales to ensure that more and more people learn the skills required to intervene and save a life from suicide. The ultimate aim of the programme is to create suicide-safer communities, enabling individuals to recognise the early signs of suicide, to safely and confidently intervene, and take action to save the person at risk of suicide. We aim to raise awareness of the signs of suicide, and empower more and more people to become suicide helpers within their communities. 

The Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health

As a direct result of the pandemic, more and more people are suffering with their mental health. Increased isolation, job losses, relationship breakdowns, financial worries, pre-existing health conditions made worse by the lockdown, have all heightened the risk of severe mental illness and suicidal thoughts; for many they feel the only answer may be suicide. 

Many people considering suicide indicate their distress and their intent, sometimes very discreetly. By recognising these early indicators and understanding how to act quickly, you could help save a life from suicide in your community.

ASIST and safeTALK workshops

ASIST and safeTALK are the suicide intervention programmes delivered by ASC trainers.

The Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) model will help you recognise and respond to these invitations for help, give you the confidence to ask about suicide if you are concerned about someone's safety and provide you with the tools to help prevent the immediate risk. 

ASIST is a two day interactive workshop in suicide first aid. It is the most widely used and researched suicide intervention skills training in the world. It teaches participants to recognise when someone may have thoughts of suicide and work with them to create a plan that will support their immediate safety. 

Although ASIST is widely used by healthcare providers, participants don't need any formal training to attend the workshop - anyone can learn and use the ASIST model. 

safeTALK complements the more comprehensive 2-day ASIST delivery and other suicide intervention training programmes. safeTALK is intended to widen the reach of suicide alert helpers by attempting to ensure that thoughts of suicide aren't missed, dismissed or avoided. 

safeTALK is designed for those in the community who need to be suicide alert in their job roles. It can work for organisations that already have ASIST-trained helpers in place. It concentrates on linking a person with suicide thoughts with those who have undertaken ASIST and therefore have developed the skills to do a suicide intervention. 

How can you help?

Right now, we are doing our utmost to raise awareness of suicide intervention techniques and offer ASIST and safeTALK training to organisations and individuals across South Wales. However, given the heightened risk of suicide for so many as a result of the pandemic, the need for building suicide-safer communities is greater than ever and demand for our workshops is ever increasing. 

Furthermore, we want to continue to raise awareness of how to build suicide-safer communities, how to save a life from suicide. To empower more and more people to feel that they could help a friend, a loved one, a colleague, a stranger, who may be experiencing suicidal thoughts. 

As a charity, we are doing our best to provide suicide intervention training to as many individuals as possible. However, with limited reserves and an unprecedented drop in funding and fundraising, the rising costs of delivering training to meet the increased demand is not sustainable. 

• We need more trainers to allow us to deliver more courses. 
• We need more funds to purchase the materials and equipment required to deliver these intensive courses. 
• We need to be able to deliver our workshops to more and more organisations; including healthcare providers, emergency services, large employers, schools, colleges and universities and charities or community groups working with vulnerable adults and children. 

Your donation could help us to deliver more and more workshops across Wales, creating more suicide-safer communities and enabling more individuals to help, intervene and save a life from suicide.