By: Joseph Grifonetti
After the first two global issue articles where I focused on the extremely high rate of male suicide across not only the United States but the entire world, and tri sector engagement that could remedy this issue, we are now talking about social innovation. These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Relating this back to my topic of male suicide (and suicide in general) I came across a few ideas that could work. One that stuck out across the Atlantic was the Five Year Forward View program that England uses, essentially it is a mental health task force that had a goal of starting wide ranging engagement with people with personal experience of mental health issues [1]. Also in the United Kingdom the Eastern Academic Health Science Network (Eastern AHSN) hosts innovation exchanges where people come together to think if ways to combat mental health issues.
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Another form of social innovation is men and women in the United Kingdom have a network of trained suicide first aiders that was just launched two weeks ago[2]. All of these strategies are great and really help build a strong network of people who care about the same issue, that issue being the extremely high global suicide rate and how we need to stop it. Some other ideas that I had were potentially making a network of people who struggle with this issue so they know that they are not alone and can through any problems they may have.
References:
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Mental Health Taskforce. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2, 2018, from https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/taskforce/
S. (n.d.). Help to support a network of trained Suicide First Aiders. Retrieved November 2, 2018, from https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/help-to-support-a-network-of-trained-suicide-first-aiders
Challenging innovators to help prevent suicide. (2018, August 31). Retrieved November 2, 2018, from https://www.eahsn.org/news/2018/08/challenging-innovators-to-help-prevent-suicide/
[1] Mental Health Taskforce. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2, 2018, from https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/taskforce/
[2] S. (n.d.). Help to support a network of trained Suicide First Aiders. Retrieved November 2, 2018, from https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/help-to-support-a-network-of-trained-suicide-first-aiders
