“Don’t Hide it. Talk about it” Campaign

At Choose Life one of our key objectives is to promote greater public awareness of suicide and how it can be prevented. We aim to encourage people who may be feeling suicidal to talk to someone they trust or phone a helpline.

A suite of awareness campaign materials have been developed that will assist in communicating our objective. These are currently being rolled out in communities across Scotland to help those feeling suicidal to get the help they need.

View the campaign materials in the Downloads table on the right of this page.

In order to identify whether the materials were acceptable to the target audience and in particular whether they could cause 'harm' / heighten risk of suicidal behaviour, extensive insight gathering took place in Spring 2007. The materials received an overwhelming positive response, with a few minor adaptations being recommended which were subsequently made to the materials.

The full insight gathering report can be downloaded here.

This was supplemented by a comprehensive review of the literature to identify whether encouraging people to talk about suicidal feelings is associated with any known/identified positive or negative outcomes, and to identify any similar/relevant awareness raising/social marketing campaigns and their impact.

The review, which was conducted by the Institute for Social Marketing (ISM) at the University of Stirling and the Open University, can be downloaded here.