Welcome to the Choose Life e-newsletter
The previous two months have seen Choose Life and its partners working tirelessly to deliver Suicide Prevention Week (7–13 September) and Mental Health Awareness Week (4–10 October), as well as to contribute towards the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (1–22 October).
What binds these three highly significant initiatives is that they help to break the taboo around mental health, and encourage people to think about how they feel emotionally, and talk about it. In this way we can collectively work towards a culture where people experiencing mental health problems, or challenging life events, feel OK about opening up – knowing that they don't have to pretend that everything is fine, and that there are people who are willing and able to help them.
We would like to acknowledge those who contributed to Suicide Prevention Week with personal testimonies around what led them to become suicidal, and to subsequently recover, as well as experiences of bereavement. We know that it is not easy for individuals to make public challenging life circumstances, and are immensely grateful to them for doing so to help the campaign messages to resonate. You can find out more about the campaign, as well as the other activities the national team has been involved in, in the
National Team Update. Also, look out also for just-announced dates for the 2009 Choose Life Annual Summit and the All Scotland Suicide Prevention Trainers Conference.
We are really keen to keep people as informed as possible, so if you know of someone who may be interested in receiving this newsletter, please click the 'Tell a Friend' link at the bottom of this newsletter.
If you wish to contribute to the next issue, or have any comments on this one, please email us at info@chooselife.net
Sadly, this will be my own final contribution to the newsletter as I will be leaving Choose Life and NHS Health Scotland on 23 December. Looking back on the last few years, it is truly amazing at what has been achieved. The strength of Choose Life has been the diverse partnerships and unyielding commitment of so many to prevent suicide. I am honoured to have worked alongside so many talented people from whom I have learned so much. I know the pioneering work underway to prevent suicide will continue for many years to come.
Best wishes
Dougie Paterson
Programme Manager
Choose Life National Team
Choose Life Inverclyde has been recognised as an innovative and successful initiative to help raise awareness of the issue of suicide, and received the Best Partnership Working (Public/Voluntary) Award at the Association for Public Service Awards (APSE), recently held in Cardiff.
As well as the national advertising and media relations to mark this year's Suicide Prevention Week, a host of local awareness-raising initiatives took place up and down the country to deliver the message as directly as possible. Some examples are included here, but for more information on what happened in your area contact your local
Choose Life Co-ordinator
Record-breaking cyclist Graeme Obree launched Mental Health Awareness Week (3–10 October 2009) in Inverclyde.
'Suicide. Don't hide it. Talk about it.' materials were distributed at 'Music Like a Vitamin', the opening concert of this year's Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (SMHAFF), which took place from 1–22 October.
The Scottish Government has developed a new practical guide for dealing with stress and getting more out of life, which was launched as part of the new public-facing communications campaign, Steps for Stress, on Monday 2 November.
