#167 Hope in Action: Understanding Suicide and Supporting Each Other with Daniel Rylatt

Full Podcast Transcript
Episode Title: Hope in Action: Understanding Suicide and Supporting Each Other with Daniel Rylatt

Joe: Daniel, welcome to The Power to Be Happy podcast. I’m stoked that we’re here having a conversation again—this time about quite a different topic, about a vital topic, about a necessary topic. I honour you for being here, for being in this space, for making the time for this. But I want to welcome you to the show. How you going, Daniel?

Daniel: Hey, Joe. Yes. Good day. Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me along and, yeah, having one of our conversations.

Joe: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it, Daniel. And today, we’re talking about, you know, a difficult topic. I want to probably start with, you know, how this conversation has come about.

Daniel: Yeah.

Joe: We’ve been doing some workshops in the community, in the city council, and it all really came about from the time when we were out in the bush, out on a walk, out in nature. We were becoming friends, and I learned a lot about you. I also learned that you’re a mental health professional in the space of suicide prevention. And it was fascinating to me. I remember just asking you, like, “Daniel, why do people do it?”

And in that moment, Daniel, when you started to really break it down for me, I remember we actually stopped. Right? We stopped on the path—it was like a sandy path—and you actually started drawing out this diagram on the ground. You said, “There are three factors that have to come together.”

And I remember feeling this mix of emotions. A part of me was excited to learn about it, but another part of me was flinching. I almost wanted to run away. I felt lightheaded, overwhelmed. I thought, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe we’re talking about this. Stop, stop, stop.”

But that’s when I realized: this is a vital topic. This is a difficult topic, particularly for anyone with a history of mental ill health or who’s been through difficult things in their life. So I think it’s so vital to talk about it in a way that’s safe—or safe enough, I should say—using the right language, but also empowering.

And so, yeah, I want to thank you for doing the work that you do in this space for so many years and supporting people. Thank you for what you’re doing. And, yeah, tell us—what do we need to know before we get into the conversation of understanding suicide and how we can support ourselves and the people around us?

Daniel: Yeah. Well, we need to know that suicide is very confronting. It’s a very emotive topic, as you’ve referred to, but we also know it affects pretty much all of us in one way or another.

When we had that talk, I remember the walk and the talk that we had—and getting down and drawing the diagram in the gravel, in the sand. One of the things we talked about then was, you know, I said there is research out there that indicates that for every person who dies by suicide, up to 134 people are affected. That’s the ripple effect.

At first, I thought, “Well, that’s a really large number—how does that make sense?” But if we think about it, people are connected to communities in general one way or another—whether it’s through school, work, family, social groups, sporting groups—and the impact of suicide goes well beyond those first degrees of contact.

And that’s when we’re talking statistics. We start to talk about numbers and percentages and things, but that’s the statistics that are recorded for suicide. That doesn’t capture all of the times that people have attempted suicide or the other people who are having intense emotional crises and might be self-harming or thinking of self-harming. So that’s really, in one sense, to use a bit of a cliché, the tip of the iceberg.

We know that in Australia, over 3,200 people die by suicide every year. That equates to about nine people a day in Australia dying by suicide. And we know that there are other parts of our population that are disproportionately affected.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: Those parts of the population, generally, we can talk about them in concrete terms—people who are parts of communities that are stigmatized or marginalized or find it much more difficult to access services. That includes people in the LGBTQI+ community and also our First Nations communities.

We know that people in those communities are subject to more stresses in daily life and worse health outcomes overall—both physically and in mental health. Unfortunately, self-harm and suicide, deliberate self-harm and suicide, are also a part of that picture.

But if we build on that—what’s behind those statistics? One way of summarizing that, Joe, is talking about connection—or, in this case, lack of connection.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: You and I were chatting about this a little bit earlier, and we were actually speaking with some people at the local city council earlier on. It can be easy—I certainly found coming into this space—it can be easy to feel quite overwhelmed and get pushed into a space of hopelessness.

But actually, in defining the problem, we can also start to indicate ways to find a solution—or even if we don’t say “solution,” ways of responding and improving things.

So if we talk about lack of connection, that points to a way out for a lot of people. What can we do if we’re wanting to be supporters or helpers? It’s fostering connection.

We do know that for people who decide they want to end their life, they feel they have no other choice—that they have no way out but to kill themselves. Often, that’s because they have overwhelming or unrelenting emotional suffering.

That suffering can come from a whole range of different causes and sources. It’s usually not simply one thing, but a collection of things—or a building up and layering of stressors and problems that, over time, build up.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: It can happen quite quickly, of course, but it can also build up over time in terms of what we talk about as psychosocial losses. These are everyday stressors, but when they’re cumulative, they can overwhelm someone’s ability to cope or connect.

That’s things like financial stresses, housing, employment, vocational, relational—a whole series of things. And then these intersect with the person’s situation and their context—whether they are part of a community that is more marginalized, if they’re experiencing mental health stressors, and a whole range of factors.

That’s why, in talking about suicide, the field talks far more about understanding and responding now.

When I started working in this area, probably about ten years ago, we used to talk about predicting and preventing. And we kind of know those approaches don’t get the best results. So now, it’s about trying to understand the individual in their context.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And I love that you bring that context in because I think it’s so important.

It really brought it home for me when you said that this many people die by suicide. You know, that it’s more, I think, than people who die in car crashes, right?

Daniel: Yeah.

Joe: So that really puts things in context—how big of a challenge it is for our society, for our culture, to bring suicide into finding more helpful ways to deal with it.

Daniel: Yeah.

Joe: But, yeah, I want to transition into talking about, you know, when we’re dealing with our own stress, with our own challenges, but also that of people in our life. Whether it’s someone—it might be a friend, it might be a loved one, it might be your partner, it might be someone you work with, or just someone in the community. How do we approach, you know, how do we kind of try to understand where they might be at? If we see that someone is not acting in the way that they usually do, how do we try to gauge where they’re at? And then, kind of, is it even safe to bring up the topic of suicide?

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good question there, Joe. And perhaps I’ll begin with the last part there. In terms of the understanding in the mental health field, we know that it is safe to bring up the topic of suicide. It’s not that we talk about it gratuitously, of course, but indeed—and I had this fear when I was going through my training—I had a fear that if I asked someone if they were at risk of suicide or if they were feeling suicidal, that I would somehow prompt them or put that idea in their head.

And we know that’s not the case. We know that if someone is struggling or in crisis, quite often they actually feel burdened. They might feel ashamed, they might feel hopeless or helpless, they might feel that no one understands them or that no one else has ever felt how they feel.

So by actually addressing the topic or bringing the topic up directly, usually that has a much more beneficial effect. It lets the person know that we’re interested and sincere, and it can help to immediately start to mitigate that sense of isolation or shame. The fact that someone is interested enough and cares enough and is willing to take the time and stop and ask—of course, thoughtfully, sensitively.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So, yeah, you talked about noticing someone’s change, and that’s actually the key stepping-in point. Some of the signs when someone is struggling are those external changes—whether it be in their behaviors, their routine, how they look, even their body language.

Are they much more down, unhappy, reserved, or withdrawn? Of course, there can be lots of reasons for those things going on, and people can have a whole bunch of problems they’re grappling with and struggling with. It doesn’t mean they’re suicidal. But in terms of the topic that we’re working around today, it is about being alert to and sensitive to signs of distress.

Because as biological organisms, we’re kind of programmed—we’re hardwired—for survival. So for someone to attempt to end their life or for someone to kill themselves, generally speaking, they’ve got to overcome a whole lot of innate instinct to preserve their life.

And so, people can find themselves thinking along those lines when they have what they feel is overwhelming, unbearable, and oftentimes inescapable suffering. It could be physical pain along with emotional pain.

And so, when we notice changes in people’s behavior, their appearance, or the things they’re saying, then we can start to be—the radar’s out there, the radar’s scanning—and we start to want to respond. But response, of course, needs to be sensitive, compassionate, and really, there’s no particular guidebook in terms of required steps. But there are some fundamental principles.

And so, that’s coming from a sense of being authentic, ideally being able to take some time. So, it’s often—you know, there may not be a better time, so it might have to be a rushed conversation. But where possible, being sensitive again to the time, the place, the setting, and also respectful of the other person.

And really doing whatever we can to communicate that openness, that accepting attitude, and very much what we call a non-judgmental attitude. Because that person’s suffering or their distress—that’s unique and individual to them. And we can’t really ever know what that is like or how much they’re struggling.

So being alert to signs of distress, being willing to actually make a move forward and reach out—or, as is commonly talked about nowadays, you know, reaching out—but connecting or opening and inviting someone into a conversation.

Joe: That makes so much sense. Like, what are—I know some of—we’ll talk about, like, how do you start that conversation? Maybe we’ll kind of even, I don’t know, role-play something like that. But I want to actually ask, what are some of the things we don’t want to say? Right? Because we want to be able to have that, as you say, compassionate—

Daniel: Yeah.

Joe: —authentic conversation. What are some of the things we don’t want to say in that type of a conversation?

Daniel: Yeah. No, and I’m glad you asked that, Joe. And I do often think about it in terms of—especially, you know, in terms of—I’m someone who enjoys humour, and I know you have a great sense of humour, and we’re always joking with each other.

And from when I’ve got my mental health clinician hat on, I’m thinking, well, where does the humour stop or the blokey humour stop, and, you know, where does some real concern start?

So, some everyday phrases that we use—and of course, we’re not wanting to inhibit people’s speech—but if you are concerned about someone, we want to be talking in a way that helps them to feel safe enough, respected, and that this is an accepting and authentic kind of space.

So, if we especially start with things like, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing,” or, “You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”—these are all things we might say to ourselves or amongst our family in a day-to-day conversation.

I’m not talking about that. But if we are opening a sensitive conversation, we’ve seen some signs of distress, and we’re really wanting to inquire authentically and build some trust, build some mutual rapport and respect, avoiding saying things like, “You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?” or, “Oh, surely it can’t be as bad as all that.”

Those are phrases that are going to close down the conversation. They’re not going to invite someone to feel secure enough. If they’re already feeling vulnerable, if they’re already judging themselves and criticizing themselves, they may feel that they have a terrible burden and couldn’t possibly open up to anybody.

So we need to start the conversation if we can. We all make slips and trips. I’m sure if I watch back the podcast, I’ll hear myself saying things, and I’ll think, “Oh, why did you say that?” So, it’s not about being the word police on each individual word, but getting a handle on those concepts, very much so.

Joe: Yeah. I love that, Daniel. So true. And, like, we’ve got to know what not to say. But, I mean, how would we gauge that? How would we bring up with the person that something is different? Like, as you were saying, like, something changed. Right? How do we have that conversation, especially if the person might be in distress, might be dealing with things from the past, or might be dealing with challenges now? How do we bring it up in a way that’s respectful, but also, like, you know, bringing up those concerns in a way that we don’t just stop the conversation right away?

Daniel: Yeah. Of course. And, you know, you and I have spoken about this in the past where I could say, you know, it’s about noticing things. Joe is normally really bubbly, he’s normally very talkative, and, you know, of course, if I see you one day and you’re a bit down and flat, okay, that might be fine. But if I’m seeing you consistently over a period, I might be saying, “Oh, Joe, I’m just wondering, you know, I’m wondering how things are going. You seem a bit down.”

And of course, we know you might just sort of shake that off and brush it off or say, “No, I’m fine.” Now, depending on what else I know about the situation and about you, and what other signs or indicators are going on, I might kind of leave it at that because I do need to respect you and trust you. You know, in order to build trust and rapport, I’ve got to be able to accept what you say as well.

However, I can also speak truly to my own experience. So it’s not about me talking at you about yourself, but I can authentically say, “Oh, you know what? Look, I’m glad to hear you’re okay, but I’ve got to say, from the way I see things, you’ve really changed a lot recently, and it makes me worry about you. So, you know, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I really do want to check—are you really okay? Is there something more going on? Is there something worrying you or troubling you?”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So, you see, I started that by actually talking about my perspective. Because I’ve asked you, and you said, “No, I’m fine,” you know, you sort of brush it off—“I’m gonna talk about it, drop it, leave me alone, whatever, don’t bother me.” And if I feel that there is a need or it’s important, well, I can revisit that, but I’m doing so now from my perspective—what I’m seeing and hearing and how it’s making me feel in relation to you.

Joe: So cool. Because that’s nonjudgmental. Right? That’s just bringing your own experience into it. And that way, I’m not feeling—you know—or the person you’re talking to is not feeling judged immediately. Right? Like, “You are like this,” or, “You are like that.” It’s kind of talking about your own perspective.

Daniel: Exactly.

Joe: So let’s just say the person brings out the fact that, yeah, there are things going on. They’re stressed. They may have experienced or maybe are experiencing some difficulties now. Like, how do we talk around that?

Daniel: Yeah. Well, one of the first things is to validate that and acknowledge it, first of all. Because I’ve asked you, and now you’ve opened up. You said, “Yeah, it’s not great. This and this part,” or whatever. And now you’ve opened up a bit, I need to honour that and respect that and say, “Okay, you know, I’m really sorry to hear that, but I’m glad you felt you could tell me. Thanks for opening up or thanks for letting me know.”

So, first of all, acknowledging what’s been said.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: Importantly, you said what not to say. At times, we’re gonna move to a solution, like, “Let’s find a way out of this,” or, “What are we gonna do next?” or, “Let’s put some plans in place.” But if someone’s really suffering and struggling, we don’t want to just come in and shut it down. It can be a closing down again just to offer a solution, you know? That’s pretty similar to dismissing it or minimizing it—just saying, “Oh, we’ll just do this.”

Because if I go to that problem-solving and that fixing—and look, that’s always my first edge. You know, I’ve got a lot of training and a lot of experience in the mental health field, and I still have to have a little kind of voice in the back of my head saying, “Don’t go to problem-solving straight away, Daniel.”

Joe: It’s me. It’s me as well.

Daniel: It’s a normal reaction, so it’s not wrong. But if we are having these sensitive conversations, we’ve actually got to be, as much as we can, prepared to tolerate that distress.

Because, you know, when there’s distress or fear or whatever it is, there are a couple of main reactions people know—fight, flight, freeze—and there’s a few others we can build onto that. But if someone talks about a problem, one instinctive reaction is to kind of avoid it and run away, and that might be why I don’t even ask you. Or another is to make it go away by fixing it.

But if I try and do that, I’m not actually listening to you and understanding what’s going on for you. So asking about how the person’s feeling, kind of attempting to empathize with that—or at least, even if I can’t understand it, again, you can pretty rarely go wrong by being authentic and talking about your own experience.

So I might even say—you might tell me the dilemma or the problem—I say, “Wow, you know, I guess from my experience, that’s something I’ve never really encountered, but I can see or I can hear or I can sense or I can feel that it’s really troubling you.”

So I need to be able to validate that and acknowledge it. You might even say, “Look, thank you so much for trusting me with this, Joe.” Because if you think about it, I might be—now that I’ve asked that question—I might be the first person in your entire life you’ve talked to about this topic or about how you’re feeling right now.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So acknowledge it. Allow it to be there without running away and without trying to close it down and fix it. It doesn’t mean, of course, approving of it, but acknowledging that it’s there and that it’s real for the person, and thanking them essentially for opening up their zone of trust to you.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: That’s so powerful.

Joe: And, you know, it’s that—yeah. It’s that being authentic. It’s just really listening in. It’s just having that back and forth to try to really understand what’s going on for that person.

And let’s just say that, you know, you notice in that conversation that the person is going through a tough time. Maybe they brought it up in some way, and you sense that they’re not in a good space. They’re struggling.

But how do we then—let’s just say we talked about—how do we move from “They’re struggling” to “I’m worried that you might be thinking of suicide?”

Daniel: Yes. Yeah. Exactly. There’s a couple of broad ways. I’ll try not to make it overly complicated, but one we might call the normalizing or external viewpoint, and the other is the person-specific or internal viewpoint.

So, you might tell me certain things have happened in your life, or this is what’s going on for you at the moment, or things have happened in the past and now it’s come back and affected you. So I’ve acknowledged the reality of that, I’ve expressed some empathy and sympathy or some support, and I’ve thanked you for trusting me.

And then, if nothing explicit has come out but I’m worried about it, I can say, “You know, Joe, often when people are experiencing those kinds of things, sometimes they can get into a crisis situation and they can even start thinking about suicide. I’m just wondering, have you been thinking about suicide?”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So that’s that external or normalizing perspective. There’s a mental health professional—he’s actually a psychiatrist in the US—called Sean Shea. He has a clinical institute that he’s founded there, and he’s published several books and techniques on how to ask questions about sensitive subjects. It can be about mental health, it can be about physical health, and of course, mental health and suicide are very sensitive and sometimes even taboo subjects.

So, he coined this and labeled it the normalizing approach, saying, “Lots of other people who have been in similar situations have felt this. Just wondering if that’s how it’s affecting you.”

The other way is what Sean Shea calls shame attenuation, but it’s like what I call the internal or personalizing approach. And I might use that particularly if I know you a little better. When we’ve got a closer relationship, I might say, “You know what, Joe, just hearing about all of that makes me think. I’m wondering about you, and I’m wondering if, given everything that’s happened to you and how you told me you’re feeling, you’ve been having those thoughts. I’ve seen how withdrawn you are. I’m worried, and I’m wondering—have you been thinking about suicide?”

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: I shouldn’t, by the way—if we go back and watch it—I probably wouldn’t have said “worried” because I don’t want you to then worry about me worrying about you, if I can put it that way.

Joe: Exactly.

Daniel: But then again, I think that’s also true because, you know, you’re not ever gonna be in a place where you can perfect it.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: You haven’t got the script there perfectly.

Joe: Yeah. You’re not gonna say, My dear friend… Oh, hang on. So yeah, let me rewind

No, that’s totally right. But I wanna also focus on the fact that we are being very specific, right? We’re not—again, you know, we talked about things we want to avoid using phrases like, “You’re not thinking of doing something stupid or silly, are you?” We’ve been very direct, right? So we’re saying things like “suicide” or “killing yourself.”

Daniel: Yep. And just before I respond to that, I’ve talked about the two approaches—internal, external, general, personal. Neither one of those is right or more right than the other. It depends on the situation, the feel. If you don’t know what to do, just mentally flip a coin and choose one. It doesn’t really particularly matter in most circumstances.

Joe: And you could probably even switch between them in the context of one conversation.

Daniel: Yeah. Exactly.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: But then, to come to the question you asked now—yes, if we’re actually concerned about a suicide risk, and we’re gonna have this conversation meaningfully, we need to actually know what we’re talking about.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: Because there are many times—as you said, I work as a mental health professional—and sometimes I’m interviewing someone and I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness, this is where the conversation’s going.” It might be the source of it, it might be anywhere else, and it’s not until I ask those clarifiers that I realize, “Oh, okay, I was on the wrong track. We’re not heading down this pathway, it’s about something else.”

Or, you know, you might be telling me about your problems, and the example we’ve used today is, say, someone’s lost their job. That’s why I have to understand—what is the meaning and the impact on that person?

Because to me, for instance, losing my job—that would be, “Oh my goodness, this is terrible, this is a disaster. How am I gonna pay my rent?” and all of this kind of thing.

So if I think about it from my point of view, I’m gonna impose that view on you. That’s why I need to put my own perspective aside and be genuinely there to find out your perspective.

Because for every time that someone loses their job and I say, “Oh my goodness, that’s terrible, you poor thing, how are you gonna cope?” they might go, “Yeah, it’s great. I really wanted to get out of there, and I’ve got this fantastic opportunity.”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So, we’re wanting to have a laugh a bit, but I’m not joking about that. It’s about the person—what the person’s perception and interpretation of those events are.

Because you might be really down on it because, yeah, to play with the job theme, you might have decided you’re taking your career in another direction, and you’re feeling really bad because you don’t want to tell your boss. You’ve got a really good boss, a really good company, a really good manager, whatever it is, and you feel like you might let them down.

So in that little scenario I’ve just painted, you’re actually feeling really down because you’ve got an exciting project, but you’re worried about how it’s gonna impact on you.

So until I find out the extent of that feeling, I might be trying to problem-solve something that’s not there.

Joe: Yeah. Totally. I love that because that goes back to being authentic and listening. And so let’s just touch on that for a moment because I think this is so vital. Especially for people like me who love to jump in and problem-solve or are sometimes tempted to assume things, right? Like, “Oh, this is how I am. This must be how everyone else is.”

How do we become more empathetic and really try to listen by taking the other person’s perspective in a way that’s rooted in compassion?

Daniel: Well, it’s those—and you pretty much answered the question in the way you asked it—it’s about being very present, what we call active listening.

In fact, I’ve worked in mental health for 20 years now, and it’s only about two or three years ago that I actually discovered a deeper meaning of empathy. I thought I knew what sympathy and empathy were, and it wasn’t until I was running courses and workshops in these areas that I realized I had it wrong.

I used to think that empathy was me putting myself in your position—mentally imagining what it’s like for me, Daniel, sitting there in Joe’s chair running the podcast.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: That’s wrong. What empathy actually—like radical empathy—is, is me doing what I can to imagine what it’s like for you in your chair. Not what it would be like for me in your chair, but what is it actually like for you?

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: And we can never truly know, but we can try.

Daniel: But in one of our other conversations about this topic—I know on the weekend—I mentioned it’s something you can Google on YouTube. Look up on YouTube, there’s an interview, and the guys in Northwest Mental Health actually put me onto this little clip. It’s about two minutes long, and it’s a news report about an interview with this fellow, Darnell, the bus driver.

I won’t talk you through it now in detail, but if people are interested, they can look it up. Darnell’s actually a bus driver in the US, driving across a bridge with a busload of commuters during the morning peak. And there’s someone on the bridge, and they’re actually on the other side of the railing on the pedestrian bridge. There’s a car bridge, a pedestrian walkway, and a railing.

So Darnell, he stops the bus in the middle of traffic. Yeah. He calls back to base to ask them to call the ambulance. And he gets out, and he actually goes up to the person. He doesn’t rush at them. He’s a really big guy, and the person on the other side of the railing is quite small—a small woman.

And Darnell’s a bus driver on a busy bus route in the morning. He’s put himself in that position, that person’s position. You know, it seems kind of really obvious, but he noticed it, and he stopped. Cars are going past, people are cycling past—you can see it in the footage from the dash cam in the bus.

And Darnell decides—he realizes there’s someone in distress. You know, who’s gonna respond? So he gets out, he stops the bus, gets out, and he says—he just says to the lady, “Ma’am, would you like to come back onto this side of the railing?”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So he’s responding to what’s there. He doesn’t need to ask her what problems she’s got. He doesn’t need to ask her how she’s feeling about them, you know, in that sense.

We don’t want to overcomplicate it. That’s why I love this example. Sometimes, when we’re running a workshop for professionals, I show that at the end of the day. I say, “Okay, we’ve just spent eight hours learning all of the theory and the techniques and practicing them, and here’s a bus driver that can do the whole thing in two minutes.”

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: Because he just says, “Ma’am, would you like to come back on this side of the railing?”

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: And as I mentioned to you, Joe, he’s a big guy. The lady in particular is quite small. He actually sits down on the ground so that they’re on the same level.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So this guy’s brilliant. He plays American football, he drives a bus, and he does a perfect suicide awareness and response.

Joe: Yeah. In two minutes.

Daniel: In two minutes.

Joe: Love it, Daniel. I think that’s such a perfect example of how you kind of cut straight to the chase. Right? You don’t—you know, and obviously, every situation is different. Every situation is different.

But still, sometimes you can just be there. And I think that’s what we’re talking about—what you’re really talking about—that right level of empathy. You’ve been there with a person in the moment.

You don’t bring your own opinion, perspective, or judgment. You’re there. You’re helpful. You’re ready to listen. You’re ready to support.

Daniel: Yeah.

Joe: Now, let’s just say the person you’re talking to is—yeah. Maybe you ask them in a way that is direct and will not be misunderstood, right? “Are you considering suicide?” or, “Have you had thoughts about killing yourself?” Now, let’s just say the person said, “Yeah.” You know what? That’s something that’s come up—or whatever way they say it. Like, what do we say or do then?

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m thinking back to the start of this conversation this afternoon. There are going to be clues in that already as to how we can respond.

Because there’s some understanding of what’s going on for them, but also, as we’ve just spoken about—bringing in, you know, referencing the general response that Darnell epitomized—is that people often have their own resources, their own ways of coping. In times of crisis or stress, they can actually lose touch with those or forget about them.

So it’s not all about an expert mental health clinician intervention—that there’s someone else who can magically sail in and keep someone safe. There’s a whole range of things. I often talk about it in terms of a pyramid or that sort of triangle, with the base being the person’s own resources.

Now, for that example with Darnell and the woman on the bridge—her own internal coping resources—they’re overwhelmed at that point. But for the rest of us, in our own conversations, in our own lives, for ourselves or our loved ones or people we work with or people we know, it’s important not to forget those things.

So that’s things like our walk—that’s how we got started on this conversation, Joe.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: Because you ring me up or message me, “Daniel, when are we going for a walk?”

Joe: Yep. Yep. Because that time just doesn’t arrive by itself, does it?

Daniel: No. We have to make a conscious decision to make that happen. I have to put it in my diary. I have to make sure I protect that time. And sometimes I ring up and go, “Joe, sorry, I can’t make it. We’ll do it next week or the week after.”

But there are internal coping mechanisms. It’s things like going out in the garden, reading a book, calling a friend, going for a walk to the beach, patting a dog—all of those things.

So I mention that because it’s important not to lose sight of those.

Joe: Yes.

Daniel: And to know that there’s a whole way of responding and supporting.

So, some of those things—those internal, self-directed things that we already have or know—I was speaking to someone once, and they were actually quite an accomplished musician. They played a number of instruments, and they were in a really quite terrible situation.

And I said to them, “You know, the weekend’s coming. Are you going to play one of your instruments?”

And they kind of looked at me, and they’re like, “What are you talking about?”

And I said, “Well, you’ve just been telling me you play this and this and this and this.”

And they said, “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about that.”

Of course, they hadn’t forgotten, but they had lost touch with that. They had become disconnected from it.

And I asked them about it, so we sort of, you know, settled on one of the instruments. I said, “Where is it?”

They said, “Oh, it’s in my wardrobe, at the back of the wardrobe, up on the top shelf.”

I said, “Do you reckon when you get home, you could take that out? And maybe on the weekend, you could play that instrument?”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: So I’m not being flippant about this. We all have—everyone has—some sort of way of coping that they’ve forgotten about or lost touch with, and usually, that can be reactivated.

Then there’s the next thing up the pyramid—social contact. And that’s kind of just connecting with people, catching up with friends, inviting a friend for coffee.

And there are two ways of doing that. One way can be, if you like, keeping that privately to yourself. Like, “I want to catch up with my friend. Let’s go see a movie, or let’s go for a coffee, or let’s go for a walk at the beach.”

And I’m just taking—I’m just making use of that social connection to help sustain myself. I don’t, for whatever reason, want to open up to them. I might not need to, but I’m reinvigorating that social connection.

The next level is what we might do if—because we talk about these issues—I would feel quite comfortable. There are lots of people I wouldn’t ring up and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m having an emotional crisis. I don’t think I can cope. Could you come and help me?”

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: Like, I know they would, but I would feel really awkward about that.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: But I wouldn’t feel awkward calling you up and having that conversation.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: Because I know, through our conversations we’ve already had about this topic, I know that you would want to be involved.

Joe: Yes.

Daniel: And I know that I wouldn’t have to start back at zero or one in the conversation. I could start right where we are in the conversation.

So there’s social contact that’s kind of more general, and then there’s the more specific—that trusted friend, the mentor, the person you’ve shared all sorts of troubles with in the past—that sort of connection.

And then there’s the professionals.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: So it can be a counselor, GP, or a drop-in center. You know, we were around in Frankston last week, and they’ve got a drop-in center through the library, through the council there, where there are some social workers on hand. So people might know about those local resources.

And then there’s more specific—there’s going to the GP and saying, “Actually, I think I need to speak to a mental health professional, mental health social worker, or a psychologist.”

Then the top of that pyramid is actually the acute health services.

And so they’re things like the triple zero emergency line or the local crisis team or the emergency department. And you can go and seek help there. If that’s not the right spot, they’ll tell you. They’ll let you know and redirect you to where the right spot is.

So you don’t have to solve that puzzle yourself. If you’re struggling yourself with trying to help someone, you don’t have to get all the answers right.

But that’s a little bit of it—a bit of a hierarchy. And it shouldn’t be stepwise. You can weave all of those things together.

The other thing you’ve often asked me about is also about those helplines. And I think Headspace and Beyond Blue—they also have some online chat groups.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: And some of those are 24/7—24 hours a day, seven days a week. Not all of them are, but some of them are.

And the people there are trained and experienced. If it’s appropriate for them to help you in that moment, they will. And if it needs something more, they’ll actually let you know and help connect you in.

So, you know, we’ve been doing this sort of little bit—almost a role play, not quite a role play—but, you know, Daniel and Joe, and I’m asking you, and you’ve opened up.

So there might be a time where I say, “Joe, I’m really worried about you, and I think we need to call someone straight away.”

Joe: Can we do that?

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. And if it seems that serious, I need to stay with you until we can make that call, until we can get the professionals involved. Other times, no, it’s fine. It’s like, “Okay, you know, Joe’s telling me he’s on top of it. I know he’s going back home, I know his situation there, there’s going to be someone at home.”

And so we’re getting into the realm now of what we call safety planning.

Joe: Yes.

Daniel: By the way, in case I forget, there’s a really good safety planning app available. It originally comes out of the work of some researchers in the US—Barbara Stanley and Gregory Brown—around US veterans. These are men and women from the armed services returning from conflict zones.

When they were having a crisis, they might be in their town, they might not even know where the local hospital is or what the phone number for the crisis service is. So they realized—even if we just get a piece of paper and write down the phone number for the hospital—when we’re not in a crisis, we can think, we can plan, we can generate.

And we start to lay down some of those ideas, some of those pathways in our neuronal systems. When we’re in crisis, we’re talking about the blinkers coming on. We’re more pessimistic. We can’t be creative. We can’t generate solutions. And if we see outcomes, we usually assume they’ll be negative.

So we put some of that work in when things aren’t so bad into some safety planning. And if people look it up—it’s beyond now. It was auspiced originally from the work of Stanley and Brown, and it was auspiced under Beyond Blue, but they’ve now handed that over to Lifeline, the people behind Lifeline.

So a quick internet search—if you put in “Lifeline Beyond Now safety planning,” it’ll take you there. It’s free, of course. There’s an app you can download for your phone, and that’s probably what I’d recommend. But you can also do a web-based version on the computer.

And it’s got reasonable categories about warning signs, ways of connecting, contact numbers, professional help. But importantly, with safety planning too, again, it’s not about jumping in totally with solutions, but looking at what’s underlying that and looking at meaning or reasons for living.

So when we think about safety planning—well, what are the reasons for living? Now, sometimes people will say there aren’t any, and that’s their experience. But that’s also—remember I said, for every problem, the solution is kind of contained in that. It’s like, “Okay, now we know what we need to work on.”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: This is what we can think about. This is what we can experiment with.

So safety planning might take time. It might cover an hour. Someone’s disclosed to me that they’re really very much on the verge of making a serious suicide attempt. I need to stay with them, make a call, involve them in that discussion as much as possible. But I also might have to override their wishes.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: If they tell me they’re at imminent risk to themselves or someone else, I’ve actually got a duty and obligation—an ethical and moral obligation—to respond and call for help.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: Safety planning that I talked about through the Beyond Now app—that’s a work in progress. And in fact, some other people I work with in the UK—an organization called For Mental Health—they actually advocate that everybody has a safety plan, even if you have no history of suicidal thinking, even if you don’t have a mental health history.

Because, of course, crises don’t arrive at convenient times.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: Whenever I talk about this, I see a lot of people in the group or in the workshop nodding. Crises don’t arrive at, like, 10 AM on a sunny Tuesday morning. Of course, sometimes they do. I’m not minimizing people’s—you know, adverse events can happen to people all the time.

But generally, crisis situations—they’re at one o’clock in the morning, on a Saturday or a Sunday or a public holiday.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: So we need to have had things put in place already, if we can, that we can then activate.

And so, having put some time into the safety planning, we’ve already got some things in mind. So that short-term planning, but also that longer-term piece of work.

And that might involve, “Well, I do want to see a counselor, but it’s hard. It’s hard to find someone.” You know, you put a lot of information out through the works that you do, and through this podcast, about people finding a journey to finding what is helpful therapy or what is useful counseling or support for them.

And so that takes time. So if it takes time, it means we kind of need to get to work now.

And what the people at For Mental Health shared with me—and I love talking about it with other people—those crises, they never—they come from left field. The ones that undo us, you know, usually we can’t see them coming. Or if we see them coming, we don’t get to pick the time.

And so they talk about it being like driving a car and having a safety belt and an airbag.

You know, in Australia, we’ve got compulsory seat belt laws. We do have a lower road toll as a result of that, no matter what anyone thinks of seat belts. But we don’t—I don’t, you know, when I drove over here today, I didn’t think, “Oh, I’ll probably have an accident today, so I’m going to put my seat belt on.”

And yesterday, I didn’t think, “No way I’m having an accident today, so I don’t need it. I won’t wear it.”

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: We just put that safety belt on. If we can, we have a car with an airbag in it because we actually accept that when that crisis is going to arrive, it can arrive really unexpectedly and at the worst possible time.

So I need to have that safety belt already fitted to my car, and I need to put it on.

Joe: Yep.

Daniel: And that’s the same with the safety planning.

So even if it’s this discussion that we’re having, you know, we’re activating ideas in each other’s brains. People listening and watching—they’re kind of getting ideas. So all of that’s feeding into this, “Okay, if I was struggling, or someone I love, or someone I know, or someone I just pass in the street is struggling, what could I actually do?”

So that’s the essence of safety planning. Sometimes it’s just in the next hour or the next day. You know, “Is my friend Joe going to be okay till I meet him tomorrow morning?” And then we make a further plan, or we go down to the hospital, or I’m going to sit with him while he calls his GP and gets an emergency appointment in the next day or two.

Joe: Yeah.

Daniel: As well as the longer-term safety planning that we might do through things l