Professor Patrick McGorry, Executive Director of Orygen, said, ‘The FGG is an incredibly exciting and creative initiative that drives a strong connection between the finance sector and charitable organisations to deliver better outcomes for young people in Australia.’
This initial donation will fund a project that will enable Orygen to partner with emergency departments across North West Melbourne to facilitate the development of robust systems for monitoring hospital presentations of young people who self-harm. This will provide significantly better information that will facilitate crucial improvements in the delivery of support to young people who present to hospital with self-harm.
‘We know that young people who present to hospital with self-harm don't always get the best treatment, yet they are at extremely high risk of suicide. This project will see us partnering with hospital staff to improve data collection mechanisms and, more importantly, enable us to work with them to improve the quality and timeliness of care that young people receive’, said Dr Jo Robinson, Head of Suicide Prevention Research at Orygen.
Another project to be supported through the funds will build on previous work conducted at Orygen with school-aged young people in Melbourne’s bayside area, engaging a group of young people from north west Melbourne to help develop and deliver a social media campaign designed to increase awareness of suicide in young people, and to also improve young people’s ability to seek help and to help others.
‘For too long stigma has prevented people from talking openly about suicide. We hope that this project using a social media campaign will facilitate open conversations about suicide, that are designed by young people for young people’, Dr Robinson said.
‘All this work will brings together recent work we have been into a strategic and systematic approach to suicide prevention across the region. It aligns with national and state priorities for suicide prevention that are calling for better practice in emergency departments and for more systematic and place-based approaches to suicide prevention’.
‘Tragically suicide rates are increasing and suicide remains the leading cause of death among young people. These funds will enable us to lead a concerted effort to reduce suicide risk among young people across North West Melbourne’, Dr Robinson said.