Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, organised by the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

Every year, suicide is among the top 20 leading causes of death globally for people of all ages. It is responsible for over 800,000 deaths, which equates to one suicide every 40 seconds.

Every life lost represents someone's partner, child, parent, friend or colleague. For each suicide approximately 135 people suffer intense grief or are otherwise affected. This amounts to 108 million people per year who are profoundly impacted by suicidal behaviour.

You can make a difference – as a member of society, as a parent, as a friend, as a colleague or as a neighbour. There are many things that you can do daily to prevent suicidal behaviour. You can raise awareness about the issue, educate yourself and others about the causes of suicide and warning signs for suicide, show compassion and care for those who are in distress in your community, question the stigma associated with suicide, suicidal behaviour and mental health problems and share your own experiences.

There are probably Moodscope members that have had or are having suicidal thoughts. As we're an online community, we don't know unless you tell us - we can't see the signs, so if you are suffering and don't know where to turn, please reach out to the other Moodscope members on this blog. They are an amazing group of people with big hearts, a lot of experience, advice and love to give.

Dragonfly, A Moodscope member has written the post for today which touches on suicide, it's impact and how difficult it is to tell if someone is suffering. The blog will follow shortly.

If you want to find out more about what you can do to help, please take a look at the WSPD web site: https://iasp.info/wspd2018/

Thank you.

Kind regards.

Caroline

The Moodscope team.