Darlington charity to raise awareness of risk of suicide for autistic people
A new website will launch next month
A charity in Darlington is set to raise awareness of the risk of suicide for people with autism, especially those who are young.
Saint John Of God Hospitaller is launching a new project and workshops next month to offer support called 'Here to Help'.
The website is for people with autism, parents, carers and professionals.
Rachael Smith, service manager, said: "Unfortunately there's a real need for suicide prevention strategies and awareness of suicidality specfically within Teesside, so Middlesbrough for example, has one of the highest prevalence figures for suicide in the entire country. It's standing about 17.5 deaths per 100,000 people.
"It's about awareness, information and it's about making that information as accessible as possible, meaning that everybody knows how to access support when they need it and have the resources to feel competent, empowered and to know what to do if they do have a mental health crisis.
"There's been two risk factors identified across all people; the first one is where you feel like you're a burden to other people and unfortunately, that might be amplified in some autistic individuals because there's things like workplaces which aren't always accessible.
"Basically when you don't feel like you fit in within a community and unfortunately, the research shows that autistic individuals are more likely to be ostracized or bullied as part of society, so that kind of stops people from feeling belonging because they're not included and they're being purposely excluded by other people.
"The purpose of that web platform is to provide a one stop shop for all the information you're going to need about mental help or autism suicidality. We're aiming to make that information as accessible as possible, so putting in as many accessible formats as we can and that'll be for parents, it'll be for autistic individuals themselves and it'll be for professionals and carers.
"We do hope boxes where we can create boxes to use when you're in crisis that will remind you of what positives you have in your life, we do hope journaling and we do educational sessions about how someone can recognise their emotions, how does masking affect you and is there any way you can kind of reduce that in certain situations? We do workshops for parents as well."