Submission on the draft Advice on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy

Safe and Equal welcomes the Advice on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (hereafter the Strategy), which is ambitious and comprehensive in aiming to address the problem of what drives suicide and identify the infrastructure and supports that are needed around suicide prevention.

In this submission Safe and Equal draws on our experiences of preventing and responding to family and gender-based violence in the Victorian context and:

highlight the relationship between family violence and suicide and identify opportunities to strengthen the Strategy to more explicitly account for, and address, this relationship.
outline opportunities for the Strategy to align with Australia’s approach to preventing violence against women, with a specific focus on engaging men and addressing harmful forms of masculinities that drive family and gender-based violence and poorer mental health outcomes.
call for the need for interrelated systems to support collaboration between mental health, family violence, and allied services to address the complex needs of victim survivors of family violence who have risks of suicide.
encourage an explicit research focus on the role of family violence in suicide on building the evidence base on what works to prevent suicide
suggest elements to improve governance and coordination of the Strategy’s implementation to contribute to its success.