AskThem

Scotland’s national mental health charity approached us to develop a suicide prevention campaign. Their first since 2011. The objective couldn’t be simpler. To save a life. To really understand the issue, the challenge, and our audience, we had to speak directly and sensitively to people with lived experiences. People who had experienced suicidal thoughts survived a suicide attempt, cared for someone through a suicidal crisis, or been bereaved by suicide. We heard how difficult it can be for those with suicidal thoughts to open up and how it’s just as hard for the people around them to find the right questions to ask. • Being worried about offending the person they ask. • Feeling ill-equipped to have the conversation. • Fearing what answer they might get. • Knowing something’s up but believing it’s ‘not that serious’. • Feeling that someone else would be better equipped to deal with it. • Feeling scared by the severity of the word ‘suicide’. Insight one Many suicide prevention campaigns have lacked a call to action. And not knowing what to do – how to help – leaves people feeling powerless and frustrated. Insight two People experiencing suicidal thoughts place a tremendous burden on themselves – bottling up their emotions and holding back, until they feel there is no way back. We must help them to open up before it comes to that. Insight three Suicide is incredibly difficult for anybody – absolutely anybody – to discuss. Yet a frank conversation is often precisely what’s needed. Our strategy then is to normalise the scariest word. There’s a great deal of stigma around thoughts of suicide, making it hard to discuss - just when a frank conversation is exactly what might help the most. Suicide can be prevented if we are brave enough to ask the right question. Brave enough to say ‘that word’. Because ‘that word’ – suicide – is often the permission a person needs to open up. Our campaign aims to reduce the pressure around saying ‘that word’. We knew we had to capture the emotion on both sides of this conversation and help people build the courage to ask the question everybody’s afraid of; ‘Are you thinking about suicide?’ and then show the relief of starting to really talk.