Translator: Sophie Parker Reviewer: Denise RQ
I think it can be said that everybody knows somebody
who has thought about suicide, over the course of their life
or has perhaps attempted suicide or has died from suicide.
Or perhaps you know people who have supported a suicidal friend.
Or maybe you know someone who has been bereaved
following a suicide.
The World Health Organisation
informs us that over the course of a year,
there are more deaths by suicide
than deaths from terrorist acts from homicides,
and from all the wars put together.
Unbelievable, isn't it?
All these statistics hide the real human tragedies,
and the news regularly brings us these human tragedies.
Whether it is the suicide of adolescent boys or girls,
who have been victims of bullying,
whether it is the suicide of older people who die alone and lonely,
or whether it is the suicide of soldiers, exhausted by their post-traumatic stress.
The American army has said that in recent years
more soldiers have died of suicide than have died in combat.
It's hard to hear these realities.
In Quebec, The National Institute of Public Health
recently revealed their data for 2011.
In 2011, in Quebec,
28,000 Québécois people attempted suicide,
and 1,105 Québécois people took their own lives.
1,105 human tragedies.
Three per day.
Most people who die through suicide are men,
80% are men, most of them are adults,
who leave behind them more human tragedies:
partners, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, colleagues,
trying to understand why.
I imagine that you are asking yourselves, "But why?"
Well, the answer to that question is extremely complex.
Because there is no one reason,
there is no one cause, there is no one way.
People come to suicide by many different paths
but there is one common factor among suicidal people
which is that these people are not seeking death,
absolutely not,
they are looking for a way to end their suffering.
They come to a point in their life,
where their suffering becomes intolerable.
A suffering that they carry with them for weeks, months and years,
sometimes lifetimes,
but these people come to a point, where their suffering is unbearable,
and each of them is looking for a way to stop their suffering.
They come to believe they will never be able to change their life.
In fact, a life which is very different from one to the next.
So how have these people, who all end up at the same point,
at the same stage,
how have they had such varied journeys?
We can see the journeys of people
whose lives do not get off to a great start, from the very beginning.
And those who face up to lots of adversity very early on:
separations, losses, foster homes, violence, abandonment, and so on,
and we get the impression these people are on some kind of path,
which goes from bad to worse.
And these people eventually develop mental health problems,
which are essentially an expression of the suffering they are living through,
and they often commit suicide,
and people who are somewhat characterized by this path,
are those who commit suicide the earliest often as young adults,
exhausted by suffering, by disappointments, and by adversity.
Another kind of path,
is the path of those whose lives begin relatively well,
in kind and caring families,
but they meet adversity much later on in life,
often in the form of several events that happen over a short space of time
that happen one after the other,
and that drag that person into a spiral where they feel discouraged
and can no longer bring themselves to believe that their life could change.
Often people on this kind of path commit suicide
when they are going through a separation,
perhaps with one of the last people they still have a bond with.
Another path is that of people who carry within themselves
a certain vulnerability, a certain malaise,
they find it difficult to live and feel well in life.
At times, those people who live with this malaise
will keep it a secret,
will live without ever talking to anyone about it.
Even worse, sometimes, they will play the clown
to give the impression that everything is OK,
to try to make themselves believe that everything is going OK.
And these people will hope
that one day their difficulties will disappear.
And when these people commit suicide
exhausted, as all their energy has been gradually frittered away,
when they commit suicide,
they leave around them a group of loved ones who are stunned,
who do not understand how it has happened,
that that person has committed suicide.
I imagine that as I describe these different paths,
as I have just done,
you might be asking yourselves, "So are these paths inevitable then?
Is there nothing to be done?"
Far from it, really, far from it.
Quite the opposite.
We can change the course of suicidal paths.
Indeed, in Quebec, since the beginning of the millennium,
the rates of death by suicide have fallen to 25-30%
How has this happened?
Well the ministry established a national policy, at the beginning of the millennium
for the prevention of suicide.
So what is a national policy?
It is made up of several initiatives, and many initiatives have been set up,
such as raising awareness of mental health problems.
Meaning campaigns across the country giving people insight
into the signs and symptoms of depression.
Because there is a difference between Sunday evening blues,
a passing pessimism, and a state which persists, which stays,
and which may not change of its own accord,
and which requires professional help.
Often people don't make the distinction between one and the other
and continue to think that these difficulties
will take care of themselves.
But from the moment we identify that we are having this kind of problem,
or that a loved one is having this kind of problem,
it is important to seek professional help.
The second problem across the country.
Perhaps you know people who don't like to go to the doctors,
and you will not be surprised
if I tell you that lots of men, lots of young men,
do not want to go to the doctors
they won't go to a doctor for help with their mental health.
And, in fact, that is often the barrier.
Because the barrier is not always access to help,
but the acceptability of getting help.
And if we can change that aspect that stigma around getting help,
maybe we can help a few more people.
Another initiative has been training first points of call:
doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, etc.
to quickly identify, the symptoms of mental health and addiction problems,
as early as possible.
We know that two main problems are associated with suicide,
they are extremely common and play a big role
depression and addiction,
despite the fact that we know very well how to treat those problems.
Another initiative has been
to secure suicidal locations.
By adding safety measures to bridges
to avoid people jumping from a hight,
and also for example,
by the mandatory regulation of firearms
because we know that a firearm in the home
particularly in a home where vulnerable people live,
increases the risk.
When it comes to means and locations for suicide,
do we have complete control of these situations?
Absolutely not.
We can still do certain things, we can encourage pharmaceutical companies,
when they put their products on sale,
particularly those which don't require a prescription,
to sell them in smaller doses
as they have done in England since around the year 2000.
We can also encourage car manufacturers
to put a device in car engines to make the engine stop
when there is a certain level of carbon monoxide inside the car.
There are also actions that are part of national policy,
to make the media aware of their social impact.
We know, many test and studies have shown,
that when a famous person dies,
or when someone dies dramatically, or dies by suicide,
and the media do not report it in socially sensitive way,
we observe an increase
in the following weeks and months,
of suicide attempts.
So, by imitation, people will do the same thing
as that celebrity.
So it is important that the media becomes aware
of it's social impact, and the effect of its social message,
when we talk about suicide.
We have also tried to monitor people
who have attempted suicide more closely,
because people who have attempted suicide
are at a higher risk of making a second attempt.
Have we tried everything? Is our work already done?
Absolutely not.
But I think that if we want to go further,
and if we want to decrease the rate of suicide even further,
it is now going to take the everybody's cooperation.
Not just ministries and not just a few people taking action,
but all of you, all of us,
because suicide must become everyone's business.
For example, in this room, is anyone a business owner?
So if you own a business, what you can do every year,
is to develop awareness campaigns about mental health problems.
You can set up mentorship programs in your businesses.
If your employees are gifted with excellent social skills,
offer a training program so that those employees
can go to those people in your company
who aren't doing so well, to offer them help.
If you take it upon yourself to take action,
and go further than you normally would,
when you meet someone who is suffering,
someone who is on a path of life which leads them to suicidal thoughts,
rather than seeing a problem,
you can be moved by the difficult path that this person has followed,
and let them see how their strength is touching to you,
and let your confidence that their situation can improve
give them confidence too.
And through this link with other people
we make their pain and their suffering humanly bearable.
If you work with children,
and we all know that sometimes we think of childhood as an idyllic time,
even though we know that children do live through tragedies
and sadness, and disappointment.
We can very early on in life, teach children to see themselves differently,
and we can teach them to understand
that life is not made up only of moments of happiness,
there will be times of sadness, over the course of our lives,
and we can teach them how to get past those moments of sadness.
And in our personal lives too, we can take all kinds of action,
and sometimes, what can seem like a very simple act,
can have a great impact in other people's lives.
For example, my colleague Yao Assogba,
who was a tutor at the University of Quebec in Ottawa,
lost his son, a few years ago, following a suicide.
He and his wife Andrée went through a terrible time,
and they decided to set up a foundation, the Lani Foundation named after their son.
This foundation helps vulnerable young people, young people in difficulty,
offering grants so that young people can fulfil their dreams.
So by their action, Yao, Andrée,
and their friends who raise funds for them,
create contexts for changing suicidal paths.
A colleague of mine, Mélanie, a Swiss colleague who came to Quebec
to work with us for a while,
who had been trained in suicide prevention while she was in Quebec,
she was on her way home one evening, she was coming home from work,
and she was on a bridge,
and while she was crossing he bridge to get back home,
she saw a woman on the bridge who was behaving strangely.
So she slowed down, she moved slowly towards the woman,
towards the barrier.
And the woman moved closer, and more dangerously towards the barrier.
And Mélanie moved towards her, and she saw that the woman was crying.
And when she saw that the woman was crying, Mélanie started crying too,
moved by that woman's suffering.
And the woman, seeing that a stranger was crying next to her,
not knowing whether she was crying for her or with her,
took Mélanie into her arms.
Mélanie called a taxi, and took the woman to A&E,
and called the woman's family when she arrived at the hospital.
Maybe that evening, by her actions,
Mélanie offered that woman a turning point.
Caroline, before studying psychology,
heard from a friend that her mum,
who had health problems, chronic health problems,
sometimes thought about suicide.
Gathering up her courage, one evening Caroline
brought up the question of suicide with her mother,
who confirmed that she had thought about it,
that she wanted to commit suicide,
and that she no longer wanted her daughter to stop her,
and she didn't want to be taken to the hospital.
Her mother told her,
"If you take me to the hospital, I won't talk to you again."
And Caroline told her, "It would be better if you stopped speaking,
because you could always change your mind,
but if you commit suicide you can never change your mind."
Jean-François, who took part in a study,
- I'm going to call him Jean-François -
who took part in a study ´ that I was conducting,
told us that during a certain time in his life,
he was going through a difficult time, a bitter divorce with his partner,
he didn't see his children any more
he had the impression that his life had become a failure.
He was angry, upset, depressed, suicidal,
and one day, one morning, when he was at work,
his supervisor came over to him
and he said, "Listen. I know things aren't going well at the moment.
I want you to stop what you're doing.
I want you to go to the hospital, and see a doctor,
and take this, and call this place."
And he gave him a pamphlet for a community organisation,
which helps men who are going through the difficulties of separation.
So Jean-François told us that not only did the actions of his supervisor
and the actions of the community organisation
help him to find a turning point,
but they saved his life.
If you don't have this kind of opportunity in your life,
you can still write, you can sign petitions,
you can write to your local MP, you can write to your health ministers,
you can write to the Prime Minister of Quebec and of Canada,
and tell them that we are holding on to life,
because life is important,
and we want our governments to take on national programs for suicide prevention.
And if all our concerted actions, help just one person,
if all our actions contribute to helping one person,
contribute to changing the suicidal path of a person,
then all our actions will have been worthwhile.
Thank you.
(Applause)