World Suicide Prevention Day began with a downtown walk in La Ronge on Tuesday. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW Staff)

By Derek Cornet

awareness

Co-ordinator believes Roots of Hope expansion will help prevent suicide

Sep 10, 2024 | 5:07 PM

Cathy Wheaton, the Roots of Hope co-ordinator in La Ronge, believes the program’s expansion to North Battleford and Prince Albert will benefit those communities.

“It’s great because it is really hard to deal with all kinds of mental health issues and then also suicides in that mix,” she explained.

“When we have a project that is specifically focused on that, you can do a lot more upstream prevention kind of activities versus if it is mixed in with everything else, so I think that Prince Albert and North Battleford, it’s going to be very advantageous for them to really look at the health issue, focus on it and do activities to help prevention suicide in communities.”

Roots of Hope aims to prevent suicide by relying on the knowledge and experience of local leaders to develop culturally appropriate initiatives. Examples in La Ronge, Meadow Lake and Buffalo Narrows include community-tailored solutions such as radio campaigns aimed at targeted, at-risk audiences, and suicide prevention training and support groups, which create broader awareness and prevention of suicides in the community.

On Tuesday, which coincides World Suicide Prevention Day, the Ministry of Health announced new annual funding in the amount of $400,000 to expand the Roots of Hope suicide prevention program to Prince Albert and North Battleford.

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Funding totals $1.1 million annually for all five communities and they are operated through the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

An information drive event was held in La Ronge as part of World Suicide Prevention Day. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW Staff)

“I’m glad we have a program that actually is doing a 100 per cent focus on suicide as a health issue, and also doing prevention programming,” Wheaton noted.

“I know in the past, mental health with different services on and off reserve, it’s been something they did on the corner of their desk. It’s a big health issue. It’s something that you need programs specifically to focus on.”

Wheaton, who helped launch Roots of Hope in La Ronge more than six years ago, said the program doesn’t just focus on intervention but protective and risk factors as well. It also works on means restriction, which is trying to reduce or eliminate methods of suicide that people may have access to.

When she first joined the program in La Ronge, many people were calling the number of suicides in Northern Saskatchewan a crisis. She said it is hard to determine if the issue is still such a prevalent concern as it once was.

“Some of these health issues are really hard to nail down in terms of identifying when that’s an issue,” Wheaton said.

“Those are also private matters with families as well. Being a suicide prevention trainer, we know that a lot of the statistics we have in Canada and North America are likely an underestimate, but we don’t have accurate stats. Sometimes people don’t even know for sure when there is a loss, specifically what the cause was and that includes suicide. It’s one of those things that could be a factor, but we may actually not know that all the time.”

World Suicide Prevention Day is meant to raise awareness around the globe that suicide can be prevented. It was first launched in 2003 by the International Association for Suicide Prevention with the endorsement of the World Health Organization.

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If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of self-harm or experiencing suicidal thoughts, please contact:

Canada Suicide Prevention Service (1-833-456-4566), Saskatoon Crisis Intervention Service (1-306-933-6200), Prince Albert Mobile Crisis Unit (1-306-764-1011), Regina Mobile Crisis Services (1-306-525-5333) or the Hope for Wellness Help Line, which provides culturally competent crisis intervention counseling support for Indigenous Peoples at (1-855-242-3310).

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com