Suicide prevention bill before Commons committee
Posted Mar 7, 2012 04:36:59 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A private members bill calling for a federal framework on suicide prevention is before a House of Commons committee.
Tana Nash, Co-ordinator of the Waterloo Region Suicide Prevention Council spoke to the committee in Ottawa yesterday. She says there needs to be specific goals for reducing the number of suicides. “We need to be bold,” she told 570’s Gary Doyle Show today. “(and) actually put a number out there and say, that within ten years, let’s cut the number of suicides across Canada by a third or two thirds…and then figure out all the steps that we’re going to do to get there.”
Nash says we could learn a lot from other countries where prevention strategies are already in place including implementation and other, larger pieces. For example, she recommends workplace training on mental health first aid and suicide prevention, much like there is CPR and first aid training.
Nash says prevention is everyone’s responsibility. “So many people are touched by mental health issues as well as by suicide,” she says. “I know it’s not the most positive topic, we don’t necessarily want to have the conversation but we need to have the conversation.”
Bill C-300 was brought forward by Kitchener-Conestoga MP Harold Albrecht.
