Take Action!

11 November 2017

Our first action was to organise a time to speak in assembly about the help line and how to access it when you are feeling low. We came across a disabler when organising this action, some teachers did not think that we should share our message in this way. Therefore, we needed to go back and do more research around the best way to deliver our message.

When looking at the Ministry of Health website it states “It’s OK to talk about suicide. However, talking about the details of a suicide (like the method) can put vulnerable people at risk.” This is exactly the angle that we wanted to look at this from “It’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay not to talk about it.” This led us to looking into other ways to share our message. We thought that maybe a way to overcome this disabler is to instead share a message in the morning notices.

The notice we asked to include was:

“WHERE TO GET HELP:

If you are worried about your or someone else’s mental health, the best place to get help is your GP or local mental health provider. If you need to talk to someone, the following free helplines operate 24/7:

DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757

LIFELINE: 0800 543 354

NEED TO TALK? Call or text 1737

SAMARITANS: 0800 726 666

YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633 or text 234 ”

We feel that this was a good outcome for our first action. A large range of students heard the message and were given access to a helpline. What enabled us to do this was being able to share a message in the daily notices, our research around what is appropriate to say and support from our English teachers to write the message.

On reflection we think that this was a good way to share our message. We are excited to get on to our next action for this project - The Shoe Project. Look into this more here: yeswecare.nz