CMHA Oxford County offers a number of suicide prevention resources and services. See more below.
Suicide is the triumph of pain and fear and loss over hope, but it is almost always preventable through caring, compassion, commitment and community.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) first report on violence and health, published in October 2002, indicates that suicide is the single greatest cause of violent death around the globe; more deaths occur annually than all war casualties and homicides combined.
The report states that suicide is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and therefore is an important public health problem. Of the 82 countries reporting suicide statistics to the WHO, Canada ranks 26th putting it in the top third. Canada’s national government has been aware of suicide as a serious community issue for close to two decades, having published a leading-edge national suicide task force report in 1987 and comprehensive update in 1994.
Suicidal behaviour is an action which has a fatal outcome. It is not an illness and does not result from a single cause. Suicidal actions (resulting in fatal and non-fatal outcomes) should be viewed in the context of mental health issues and other conditions of risk – such as social isolation, biological vulnerability, trauma and stress, family violence, illness, and substance abuse – that interact in complex bio-psychosocial ways.
The tragic and complex nature of a suicide action has traumatic and rippling consequences, both for individuals and for those around them. The death of one person affects parents, children, siblings, and grandparents, in addition to relatives, friends, teachers, co-workers and others known to the individual. Although descriptive accounts are available, neither Canadian nor international research has focused sufficiently on the impact of suicide on the well-being of those left behind.
Suicide is generally seen as a preventable action, the causes of which lie in some combination of biological, psychosocial and community factors. There is a need for better understanding of the nature of suicide and for a national strategy designed to mobilize policies and services. We need to affect public attitudes toward suicide and its prevention if the impact on Canadians is to be reduced. A strategy requires a broad array of individuals and organizations, public and private, to join in the common cause of prevention through the coordination and development of appropriate services in communities across the country.