One of my wishes for 2021 is that people feel able to talk about suicide
Seonaid Stallan (51) lost her son Dylan to suicide when he was 18 years old.
Dylan had been struggling for a number of years with body dysmorphic issues resulting in anxiety and depression.
Tragically three weeks after Dylan’s death Seonaid’s sister-in-law Vanessa, who had been very close to Dylan, also took her own life.
Seonaid is now an advisor on the Lived Experience Panel with the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group (NSPLG).
We asked her to tell us about her hopes for 2021…
One of my wishes for 2021 is that people feel able to talk about suicide.
When a family is bereaved by suicide the stigma, shame and misunderstanding around it means that people are too frightened to speak to you. No one knows what to say and they’re scared to say the wrong thing.
I wish that as a community we could be much more aware about suicide.
Until now we’ve viewed suicide as a public health issue and from the professional side such as medical care and third sector services and we haven’t really thought about finding a community solution.
No one person can solve this problem. It has to be a community. Whether that’s the family, school, workplace, the local authority, everyone needs to be a part of the solution and understand what their own responsibility is.
If someone had asked us, are you OK? Or if someone had asked Vanessa — are you feeling suicidal? That one thing alone might have made a difference.
Or if Dylan’s friends or teachers, or people other than his family, had been aware of his changed behaviours and alerted someone, that might have changed the outcome for Dylan.
If people know what signs to look out for and they know what to ask or say to someone, that could make a real difference.
The stigma that surrounds mental health and suicide means that people often feel completely unable to talk about it, and that’s the case whether you’ve been bereaved by suicide or you’re having suicidal thoughts.
You need someone to ask you how you’re feeling and that’s very difficult because people are too scared.
I’d ask everybody, whether they are individuals or large organisations, to sign up to United to Prevent Suicide find out what those signs of someone who is at risk of suicide are and to know how you’d start a conversation with someone.
In order to help someone, you have to work out what you’d say beforehand, because it doesn’t trip off the tongue for anyone.
If you need a new year resolution please sign up to United to Prevent Suicide.
This is just the beginning of something far bigger because it takes more than individuals to tackle this problem — it takes a whole community.
One of NSPLG’s key focuses in 2021 will be the introduction of a pilot project to provide a sustained Bereavement Support Service to families facing the tragedy of losing a loved one. The project will initially take place in Ayrshire and the Highlands. More detailed information will be revealed in the new year.
