ABOUT

Care Collaborate Connect is unique, being the world’s first approach to suicide prevention that focused on the person asking for help rather than what the helper wanted to do. When people ask for help, they are saying,

• Care about me
• Collaborate with me
• Connect me with more support if I need it

Traditionally, helpers focus on what they want to do, that is keep the person safe from suicide. They often making decisions or telling the person what they should do. Helpers often also try to reduce their own anxiety and worry, but trying to help the person feel better. They can also get caught up in trying to decide if the person is ‘at-risk’ of dying by suicide that they leave the person feeling unsupported and punished for asking for help.
 

Care Collaborate Connect reduces distress and suicide by ensuring people asking for help feel:
–  Supported
–  Cared about and validated
–  Respected to make their own decisions
–  Normal

Care Collaborate Connect is underpinned by science. When we all Care Collaborate Connect if someone tells us they are upset, we can prevent people feeling so alone and overwhelmed that suicide feels like the only option. A community of care involves family, friends, parents, colleagues, health professionals, strangers.

Are you ready to start today?

There are four components of suicide prevention:

1. Promotion of health and wellbeing of every member of our community
2. Care Collaborate Connect whenever someone is upset
3. Biopsychosocial assessments to identify the drivers of overwhelming distress
4. Evidence-based interventions that address the drivers of distress

   Read more about the framework here.

• attends to the needs of individuals, not the risk of a future event (e.g., suicide) 
  
• is an approach to care for anyone who is upset, rather than waiting until someone says the word ‘suicide’ 
  
• focuses attention on ‘what to do’ (cope with distress) not ‘what not to do’ (die by suicide)
  
• normalises unpleasant emotions, distress and coping, rather than pathologizing normal human experiences
  
• helps people cope with life, not be hypervigilant for suicidal crises
  
• situates distress within the biological, psychological, and social components of health and wellbeing.

Although we often hear the message, ‘ask for help’, too many people are harmed when they ask for help from family, friends, and health professionals. Potential helpers may be too busy, trying to take over or tell them what to do, decide it is not serious enough, or focus on their own anxieties or goals, rather than helping. Some people die after asking for help. Many others are harmed. 

Care Collaborate Connect was developed by award winning clinical psychologist, Professor Helen Stallman to help helpers help and ensure that no one is harmed when they ask for help. Professor Stallman developed the world’s first approach to suicide prevention that is focused on the needs of the person asking for help.

Care Collaborate Connect provides evidence-based online training to health professionals, workplaces and the community to help us work together to create a community of culture.