About Our Suicide Prevention Training
Who Can We Help?
Bespoke Suicide Prevention Courses For Businesses
We offer bespoke training for businesses, organisations, and groups to make sure that your staff’s mental health is a priority and to enable them to help each other in a crisis.
We’ll teach your team how to approach difficult situations and strategies for helping your coworkers and being a shoulder to lean on. We’ll also teach you how and when to signpost to other charities and mental health organisations to ensure that they get the help that they need.
If you would like us to run a workshop just for you, then please do get in touch.
Suicide Prevention Training For Clinicians
This workshop is aimed at clinicians who would like to better understand suicidal experiences and how to work psychologically with people who are actively suicidal.
Our workshop was developed in collaboration with people with lived experience and those who have supported them.
The workshop is aimed at psychological practitioners. We’ll guide you through how to help someone in a crisis and tie it in with your practice. We’ll also provide specific examples and answer any questions you have about how you can apply your new knowledge in your specific field.
Suicide Prevention Courses for the General Population
Suicide is everyone’s business and to help protect lives we can all be better prepared to step in when needed.
Helping someone in a suicidal crisis can feel daunting. To help people feel more confident stepping forward, we have produced a workshop giving people the basics and technical skills. Learn how to ask those difficult questions, how to respond in the best possible way and when to step things up if your support isn’t leading to a resolution.
Our workshop is open to anyone. It’s perfect for members of the general public who would like to better understand suicidal experiences and learn strategies for how to help.
The day aims to develop an understanding of what happens during a crisis, including the factors that lead to suicide. We will show you some evidence-based techniques for supporting someone who is suicidal, as well as how and when to access specialist help.
Our suicide intervention and prevention training is underpinned by the Men’s Minds Matter model of psychological entrapment and suicidal crises (PESC-M). The model is the first of its kind and provides a framework for psychological assessment, formulation, and intervention with people who are actively suicidal.
We run workshops for psychological therapists and the general population. We also design workshops for other frontline workers, including GPs and blue light services. Each workshop is pitched to the audience and delivered in a way that increases confidence and skills to support people through a suicidal crisis.
The PESC-M model was co-developed by Dr Luke Sullivan, a clinical psychologist who specialises in working with people who are actively suicidal, and Nigel Sanderson, an expert by experience. Luke has worked in Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Teams since 2011 and has had a specialist interest in suicide and the psychology of men since 2004. Nigel attempted to take his own life in 2017 and has since found ways to recover, thrive, and use his experience to help others.
What Do Our Suicide Prevention Courses Cover?
Our workshops are designed to equip people with skills and knowledge to increase their confidence in supporting someone through a suicidal crisis.
Our general population workshop provides people with a basic understanding of what leads to suicidal thoughts. Attendees learn how to be supportive listeners, where to access help and some evidence-based practices which might help someone who is suicidal. These include emotional regulation techniques, deep breathing exercises, safety planning, distraction and baseline functioning.
Our workshop for clinicians is more technical. It introduces psychological therapists to a model they can use to guide assessment, formulation and intervention. This workshop helps clinicians to understand the psychological mechanisms that lead to and maintain suicidal thoughts, planning and intent. We introduce ways to adapt practice to meet the needs of people who are actively suicidal and formulate and quickly identify priority targets for intervention and evidence-based practices which can be used with people who are suicidal.
Our Experts
All of our workshops are conducted by our directors and resident suicide prevention experts.
Dr Luke Sullivan
Luke is the founding director of Men’s Minds Matter, and works as a clinical psychologist in Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Teams in the NHS, specialising in delivering psychological crisis interventions to those in a crisis. He has over 20 years of experience working in suicide prevention and also founded the UK Male Psychology Conference, the Male Psychology Network, and the Male Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society.
Nigel Sanderson
Nigel is the lived experience heart of Men’s Minds Matter. Diagnosed with clinical depression in 2012 culminating in a suicide attempt in 2017 and then navigating recovery over the next couple of years.
Using his lived experience with Men’s Minds Matter helps inform everything we do. He is also currently training as a counsellor, a practising Buddhist and tries to live as healthy and positive a life as possible.