Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Helen Buckland: Clinical Psychologist Doctor on new 5-year plan for suicide prevention

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Helen Buckland: Clinical Psychologist Doctor on new 5-year plan for suicide prevention · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We've got a five year suicide prevention plan from the
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  Speaker 1: Mental Health Minister yesterday to tackle our stubbornly high suicide rates,
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  Speaker 1: six crisis cafes and new suicide prevention community funded coming
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  Speaker 1: by the end of the year. Doctor Helen Buckland is
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  Speaker 1: a clinical psychologist with me this morning. Good morning, Hi Ryan,
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  Speaker 1: Hi you good good, thank you. But I'm quite cynical
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  Speaker 1: and I can't help but feel like I've heard this
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  Speaker 1: all before and crisis cafes. Are we kidding?
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  Speaker 2: You know?
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  Speaker 1: Is this actually going to make a difference.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I'm a cynic as well. I think there has
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  Speaker 2: been you know, there's been a lot of thought and
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  Speaker 2: I can see that there's a will to try and
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  Speaker 2: improve with this plan. But in reality, it is not
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  Speaker 2: a suicide prevention plan. It is a suicide response plan.
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  Speaker 2: It's for people who are already suicidal, and there's no
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  Speaker 2: reference to tackling the causes that lead people to becoming
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  Speaker 2: suicidal in the first place, and I think that that's
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  Speaker 2: where the focus of a prevention plan should be.
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  Speaker 1: So this is the part where you talk about poverty
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  Speaker 1: and you talk about cost of living and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 2: Right, yes, But also I think that we also need
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  Speaker 2: to have a look at things like bullying in schools,
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  Speaker 2: effective child protection services, and also so the impact of
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  Speaker 2: social media on children. So I think that Minnesota, he
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  Speaker 2: needs to go back to the drawing board and come
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  Speaker 2: up with something a bit better than that's personally well.
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  Speaker 1: They are looking at banning social media for kids. That's
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  Speaker 1: got one thing, I suppose. But what about with poverty,
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  Speaker 1: because this is always something that people and psychologists and
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  Speaker 1: people in the field say, poverty is the problem, right,
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  Speaker 1: what is it? Why do so many more men than
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  Speaker 1: women in their life? If it's poverty.
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  Speaker 2: I think some of the reasons around that are because
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  Speaker 2: of the expectation that men are providers for their families,
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  Speaker 2: and so some of these traditional gender roles that you
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  Speaker 2: have around what men are meant to do and be
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  Speaker 2: and in the face of actually being really difficult to
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  Speaker 2: find jobs that are going to be covering the cost
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  Speaker 2: of living and there are enough to take care of
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  Speaker 2: your family, that is just devastating if one of your
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  Speaker 2: primary ways of thinking about yourself is taking care of
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  Speaker 2: your family. So we know that that's one of the issues.
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  Speaker 2: And I think the other thing, especially for young men
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  Speaker 2: who are leaving school and if school wasn't their favorite place,
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  Speaker 2: and they're a little bit more hands on and want
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  Speaker 2: to do practical things. What are their job prospects when
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  Speaker 2: they leave? What kind of money are they going to
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  Speaker 2: be earning when they leave so that they can go ahead,
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  Speaker 2: leave school, get out into the world and have jobs
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  Speaker 2: that are actually going to give them enough so that
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  Speaker 2: they can feel confident about moving forward in their lives
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  Speaker 2: with enough money in their back pocket to have a
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  Speaker 2: night out with their friends and look of buying home
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  Speaker 2: and having a family.
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  Speaker 1: So, Helen, I had a look at the numbers this
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  Speaker 1: morning from OECD. There are plenty of countries out there
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  Speaker 1: with high poverty rates, higher poverty rates than us, but
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  Speaker 1: lowest suicide rates. How do we explain that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things that it comes
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  Speaker 2: back to is about what children experience. In New Zealand
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  Speaker 2: in terms of abuse, we have some of the worst
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  Speaker 2: rates for family harm and exposure for children to abuse
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  Speaker 2: in the home, and so I do think that we
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  Speaker 2: need to go back to when people are young and
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  Speaker 2: address those issues and alongside issues like poverty as well.
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  Speaker 1: All right, really appreciate your time this morning, Helen. Thank
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  Speaker 1: you very much for that. Doctor Helen Interesting, Doctor Helen Buckland,
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  Speaker 1: clinical psychologist, on the government's plan for more.
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  Speaker 2: From earlier edition with Ryan Bridge.
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  Speaker 1: Listen live to news talks it be from five am weekdays,
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