Capturing More of the Community

APPROXIMATELY 20 percent of people who suicide visited their doctor the week before and 45 percent visited within the month before, making it critical for GP’s to identify and help those patients.

Last weekend Dr Vered Gordon from the Black Dog Institute was in the Upper Hunter to teach local general practitioners and practice nurses advanced training in suicide prevention and said the initiatives being undertaken as a community was inspiring.

“I thought it was terrific and the area is blessed with some wonderful health practitioners who are dedicated, motivated and compassionate and that bodes well for a community when you have a group of professionals who are like,” said Dr Gordon.

“We aim to help GP’s recognise when someone might be at risk of suicide, it might be they not sleeping well, they are in pain or have psychological stress and then knowing how to ask them all the questions about their risk of suicide,” she said.

Dr Tammy Kimpton a general practitioner from Scone Medical Centre said she was one of five staff, of four doctors and one nurse, who attended the training and they were keen to educate the entire practice.

“As a practice we are fortunate that we do have staff with a special interest in mental health and it is important that everyone from the front desk, through to the nurses doing triage, to the doctors seeing the patient that we are trained, the more people who are trained the better,” said D Kimpton.

“It was really good training it covered quite a lot of topics around suicide risk assessment, dealing with people after a suicide attempt and dealing with friends, family and community after a patient has died of suicide,” she said.

Dr Gordon said the most effective way to reduce suicide in the community was to take a cohesive approach, which she observed happening in the Upper Hunter.

“There are nine different strategies which have evidence of reducing suicide rates and the idea is to address all nine areas concurrently to make a meaningful reduction in suicide rate and health professional education is one of the nine things that are known to help reduce the suicide rate,” Dr Gordon said.

“It involved the whole community, looking at schools and emergency services across the board so the intervention reaches all different parts of the community,” she said.

“When we only do one thing at a time we still get people slipping through the cracks whereas when we have a more cohesive integrated program we are more likely to be able to hold people within the community,” Vered Gordon said.

Polly Yuille from the Where There’s a Will Foundation agreed the best approach to mental health was a community approach.

“The only way to affect real change with mental illness is by a collaborative approach and that is what we are seeing in the Upper Hunter, it is not about relying on the teachers, or the doctors, it is about the whole community coming together,” said Ms Yuille.

“While the GP’s were being trained on the weekend there was also two sessions of mental health first aid training also being run in the Upper Hunter and the more people educated, the more people in the community, as a community, we will be able to help,” said Polly Yuille.

The Black Dog Institute will also be supporting a stepped care program to screen patients in local waiting rooms.

They will be given a tablet (iPad) and asked to complete a questionnaire assessing depression, anxiety and suicide and the GP is given the results so they can discuss any issues during the consultation.

The practices which participated in the training included Scone Medical Practice, Hunter Medical Denman and Merriwa and Brook Street Medical Centre.

If you need support for depression or crisis support please phone LifeLine: 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636