Moving beyond tokenism in suicide prevention requires re-designing how lived experience guides policy.
People with lived experience don’t just sit at the table — we help build it. Yet too often, we’ve had to build the scaffold ourselves.
This presentation draws on lived experience accounts of unsafe or unsatisfactory involvement in suicide prevention co-design. Safe storytelling is essential. Without it, tokenism silences the very voices prevention depends on.
Youth and lived experience voices are increasingly invited into these spaces. But without scaffolding, preparation and support, participation slips into tokenism: people are asked to share pain without choice, containment, or safety. This risks re-traumatisation, burnout, and ultimately undermines prevention efforts.
Approach (Solution):
Safe storytelling isn’t about ticking a policy box or providing a microphone.
It’s about choice, containment, and readiness. Grounded in trauma-informed principles, safe storytelling practices include:
Impact (Why it matters):
When lived experience voices are treated as tokens, participation becomes harmful. But when voices are contained, respected, and supported, they ripple outward:
In suicide prevention, this difference can mean whether voices stay in the room. Or leave it altogether.
Takeaway:
Tokenism is the problem. Safe storytelling is the solution.
This presentation will share strategies to move beyond performative inclusion and towards practices that protect people, strengthen suicide prevention, and sustain the lived experience workforce. Examples of pilot programs will show what scaffolding looks like in action — and how it creates advocacy that lasts.