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Health Check: One Man’s Mission to Prevent Suicides

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One of Tim Barritt's ads in the newspaper

2016/03/09 GMT

One Man’s Mission to Prevent Suicides

BBC World Service - Health Check, One Man’s Mission to Prevent Suicides

The Australian sheep farmer who writes and places suicide prevention ads in local papers

The suicide prevention campaign launched by an Australian sheep farmer; What works when it comes to lowering suicide rates; Is it true that saturated fat is not that bad for you?

This week the latest figures for suicides in Australia were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Over the past five years the average number of deaths by suicide each year was 2577, and in 2014, approximately 75% of them were males and 25% females. 
Coincidentally Health Check has just had an email from a listener who has been spending his own money on a rather unusual suicide prevention scheme. Sheep farmer Tim Barritt, from the Barossa Valley in South Australia, writes adverts for his local papers, which are designed to get people talking about emotional health issues. They aim to make people feel less alone and to encourage them to seek help; every advert contains helpline numbers and information in them about how to do so. Tim is now about to publish his 81st ad and tells Claudia what prompted him to launch his campaign and why he is motivated to continue.


What is the evidence that this type of intervention is successful? Professor Keith Hawton, consultant psychiatrist and director of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University, explains what works when it comes to suicide prevention.

Saturated Fat
Two weeks ago Health Check investigated how important our total fat consumption is. And it was discovered that the overall proportion of fat or carbohydrates in our diets is probably not as important as making sure people do not eat too many calories overall. In addition, the advice from experts was that we should not miss out on healthy fats such as those from oily fish. But what about the supposed bad guys – saturated fats? In the penultimate of Health Check’s series on food dilemmas, James Gallagher, health editor for BBC News online, has been finding out.

(Photo: A suicide prevention advert written by Tim Barritt. Credit: Tim Barritt)

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