Wednesday, 29th April National Suicide Prevention Conference 2026

Topic title: LGBTIQA+ Suicide Prevention: Community‑Led Insights, Shared Priorities & National Connection
Session Hosts: ACON, LGBTIQ+ Health Australia (LHA) and Switchboard Victoria
Includes: Breakfast

This breakfast session is for anyone interested in or working across LGBTIQA+ suicide prevention. It will be a dynamic conversation about what is most needed now and what we can collectively influence. The session is an opportunity for participants to connect, share insights, and contribute to documenting emerging national priorities – hosted by ACON, LGBTIQ+ Health Australia and Switchboard Victoria.

Cost is free for delegates with a full conference registration but RSVPs are required.

• Regionally-specific approaches to suicide prevention: Making plans for what can really work - Ian Hickie

CEO Panel 'Collaboration for scalability'
Time: 9:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Panel: Shayne Connell, Georgie Harman, Angus Clelland

Achieving meaningful, population-level impact in suicide prevention requires approaches that extend beyond individual programs or organisations. This plenary panel will explore how collaboration, across teams, sectors, countries and systems, can enable scalable, sustainable, and more effective suicide prevention initiatives.

The panel will explore what enables a strong local initiative to scale effectively to a national and international level. This includes identifying the core elements that support scalability, the partnerships and collaborations required to enable growth, and the conditions necessary for success. The discussion will also consider when programs are best scaled within a host organisation and when cross-agency collaboration offers a stronger pathway for broader implementation.

Drawing on perspectives from leaders, the discussion will examine how internal collaboration strengthens organisational capacity, while inter-organisational partnerships reduce fragmentation, leverage complementary strengths, and accelerate collective impact. Panellists will reflect on practical enablers of collaboration at scale, including trust-building across diverse stakeholders, and the structural, technological, and cultural changes required to support sustained impact.

The session will also address common barriers to collaboration, such as siloed systems, competing priorities, and structural constraints, and explore strategies for overcoming these challenges without losing relevance or responsiveness. Through real-world examples, the panel will highlight how collaborative models can move beyond pilots to achieve sustained, system-wide change.

By focusing on collaboration at the centre of scalability, this panel aims to discuss how organisations can work together more effectively to increase impact, improve outcomes, and save lives. Attendees will gain practical insights into building and sustaining partnerships that translate shared intent into measurable, life-saving action.

• Essential Elements of Effective Youth Suicide Prevention: Transformative Research Outcomes via Transformative Methods - Sarah Hetrick

Keynote Panel Discussion: Development and implementation of the NSW Suicide Prevention Act 2025
Time: 11:45 AM - 12:30 PM 

This interactive panel discussion will examine the development and future implementation of NSW’s landmark Suicide Prevention Act 2025, recently passed by NSW Parliament. The Act will commence on proclamation later in 2025. It establishes suicide prevention as a core, whole-of-government responsibility, recognising that distress is often encountered in systems beyond health.

The session will bring together representatives from the Mental Health Branch at the NSW Ministry of Health, First Nations Co., Suicide Prevention Australia, and the Mental Health Commission of NSW. Panellists will reflect on the extensive consultation processes that shaped the Act, highlight the integration of lived experience and Aboriginal leadership, and discuss legislative mechanisms and governance structures at the heart of this reform.

Key features of the Act include:

• Mandated suicide prevention action plans across NSW Government departments and prescribed agencies that will be aligned with new statewide suicide prevention and Aboriginal suicide prevention plans developed by the NSW Mental Health Commission.
• The establishment of two advisory bodies, the NSW Suicide Prevention Council and the NSW Aboriginal Suicide Prevention Council, that will guide the development of statewide plans and ensure that lived experience remains central to both the planning and oversight of the implementation of the plans.
• Embedding the NSW Suicide Monitoring System in legislation to enable better data sharing and inform targeted interventions.

This discussion will adopt both a reflective and forward-looking lens, considering how the legislation makes suicide prevention a shared responsibility across all levels of government. By embedding accountability into every department and agency, the Act establishes the foundations for a more consistent, connected, and effective response aimed at reducing both suicidal distress and lives lost to suicide. The session will also explore how legislative scaffolding enables systemic reform and transparency without prescribing specific service models, offering a template for other jurisdictions seeking to build integrated, preventative systems of care. Throughout the session, panellists will engage the audience using interactive tools such as Slido, empowering participants to steer the conversation, raise critical questions, and share their perspectives on the future of suicide prevention in Australia.

By exploring the evolution of the Act and the ongoing role of community, advocates, and people with lived experience, this panel seeks to highlight the vision and practical challenges of transforming suicide prevention from a health issue into a whole-of-government and whole-of-community response.

• Postvention support for suicide loss survivors with Islamic backgrounds: Insights from Australian mental-health workforce online-survey - Elahe Derakhshan
• United voices in postvention: ripples of support after suicide loss in Victoria - Divanshu Kashyap
•  Creative, Compassionate, Connected: Community-Based Postvention Through a Suicide Bereavement Cafe - Julia O'Halloran and Helen Tomlinson
• Mental health interventions for adults bereaved by suicide - Filipe L Souza
• Bridging Clinical and Community Suicide Prevention in a Remote Setting - Candida Blackwell
• The Journey Project - Ned Evans and Andrea Ogier
• The Hope Tree: Sharing Messages of Hope at Bega Safe Haven - Amy Power and Tanya Paradine
• Suicide Prevention Action Planning: Learnings towards 2035 Embedding National Strategy in Place-Based Backbone Leadership - Adriel Burley
• Suicidal Ideation Among Older Adults in Europe: The Role of Migration, Loneliness, and Regional Contexts. - Kristina Gundersen
• United voices in practice: Strengthening lived experience training for safer and more purposeful conversations - Victoria Carrier
• Community-Driven Suicide Prevention Training Across Rural WA:  Sector-Specific Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Training Program - Jo Drayton
• Centralising compassion in suicide prevention training: Building a resilient and hopeful workforce - Libby Flynn
• LivingWorks integrated training system supported by technology - Gabrielle Hicks
• From Mantra to Action: Making Suicide Prevention Everybody’s Business at Grand Pacific Health - Vikki Radford
• Just-in-Time Learning Resources in Suicide Prevention Training  - Alison Ryder
• Future-Ready Clinicians: Strengthening Suicide Risk Competence through SafeSide Implementation - Bruce Van Haeften and Sarah Donovan
• Trauma-specific suicide prevention project: Enhancing safety and autonomy for victim-survivors of gendered, interpersonal violence.     - Donna Carley and Sarah Fox
• Coordinated suicide prevention and response: Building hope and timely pathways for students in crisis - Heather Mabry
• Contemporary suicide, self-harm and overdose prevention training: a one day versus two day training comparison - Anna Asnicar and Tessa Clarkson
• Co-designing responses to drivers of suicide with fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out construction workers - Luke Bayliss and Jorgen Gullestrup
• Peer Navigation and SafeHaven: Systems integration and relational solutions  - Melodie Grafton
• Many voices one mission collective insights analysis and findings - Jennifer Harvey and Sarah Donovan
• Organisational Readiness for Prevention-Focused Mental Health Management in Construction: Early Empirical Insights  - Brenda V Masanga
• Beyond Resilience: Systemic Solutions to Burnout in Suicide Prevention - Danielle McCarron
• Systemic approaches to psychosocial hazards and suicide prevention in the workplace  - Clayton Spence
• What protects young people from suicide? An umbrella review of protective factors - Laura Hemming
• School-based interventions for suicide prevention, treatment, and response: evidence from an umbrella review - Carly Hudson
• The successful statewide delivery of suicide prevention training to professional support staff in government schools - kieran Murphy
• Youth Suicide Early Intervention Project in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District - Kim Nelson-Miles
• Impact of Bullying on Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviours Before, During, and After the COVID-19  - Wing Yan So
• Developing the Suicide and Non-suicidal Self-injury in Children and Adolescents; Evidence-based Clinical Practice Guideline - Sydney Stevens
• Transforming CAMHS with the Suicide Prevention Pathway: A Zero Suicide Implementation Journey - Mohammad Usman, Sharon Phillips, Kimberley Hansen, Nita Padde and Sarah McDowell

This session is located on a floor above the other sessions. 

• Uniting lived experience and practice: co-creating a national theoretical-framework for StandBy Support After Suicide Program - Alexis Lamperd
• A lived experience framework in action leading the way in suicide postvention - Kristy Steenhuis
• Holding space in suicide prevention: A lived experience peer workers perspective - Glenn Cotter

• Randomised controlled trial of a co-designed, self-harm prevention program ("Bridge-to-Better") in NSW primary schools - Rachel Baffsky
• First Nations young peoples’ perspectives, experiences, and priorities for cultural connection suicide prevention initiatives  - Mandy Gibson, Lerissa Rolls and Ronald Conlon
• The unique experiences of social connectedness and suicide for bisexual, pansexual and multigender attracted people - Kimberley Pace

• Suicidality in the lives of Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Life Saving Responses - Patrick O'Leary and Craig Hughes-Cashmore
• Start the chat, make a difference: a community-led suicide prevention campaign amplifying lived experience   - Andrew Ceniuch

• Restorative just and learning culture: transforming health systems response to prevention of suicide - Sue Murray, Michelle Galli and Christy Pirone
• Strengthening Aftercare: Sharing Learnings from Localised, Lived Experience-Informed Models Across Five National Sites - Chloe Loveday and James Bell

• Building stronger foundations: key findings from the National Suicide Prevention System Mapping Project - Sharon Marra-Brown, Mitchell Rice-Brading, Alexandra Lorigan and Dennis Lam
• The big steal: How two states united together from invitation to collaboration through to innovation - Sandy Terry, Deborah Howe and Christina Lowry

• Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge at a national level - Rachel Fishlock and Michael Cook
• Break the Silence, Build the Future - Lisa Merrison and Jeremy Heathcote OAM
• Walking and Talking Together: Reflections on Suicide Prevention Training in the APY Lands  - Bethany Farley

• Screening for perinatal suicidal behaviour: lived-experience perspectives on what’s helpful and not helpful - Bonnie Scarth, Hiro Kojo, Nicola Akeroyd, Julie Levin and Sarah Hetrick
• Inclusive Practice Approaches to LGBTIQA+ Suicide Postvention and Community Centred Bereavement Support - June B and Anna McFee

• The role of research in the on-going evolution of the MATES workplace suicide prevention program - Anthony LaMontagne, Michael Kyron, Luke Bayliss and Chris Bowden
• Designing for impact: Lessons from a Regional Mental Wellbeing Literacy Campaign - Amanda Aitken

This session is located on a floor above the other sessions. 

• Young people’s lived experiences of having a family member attempt suicide - Marianne Webb
• Protective role of family,peer,and school connectedness in reducing suicidal thoughts and behaviours among young Australians - Kirsten Campbell
• Conversations on the couch and using storytelling as support in suicide postvention - Jo Langford

• Expert guidance to inform coordinated inter-agency suicide postvention responses in local regions - Lennart Reifels and Mark Bekerman
• Voices of faith: a cross-religious dialogue on understanding suicide through diverse faith perspectives - Hunena HK Khan, Ram RS Sivan and Samuel ST Tuil
• Weaving lived cultural and clinical knowledge to co-create impactful support for those bereaved by suicide - Kirsty Louden, Amanda Christian and Ben Te Maro

• Reducing the harms of discrimination on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide - Mandy Gibson
• Perinatal suicide prevention when supporting First Nations families: a peer-led approach  - Tracey Thompson and Julie Levin
• Together We Heal: Leadership in Indigenous Suicide Prevention - Tanja Hirvonen

• Efficacy of Online Suicide Prevention Community Helper Training  - Shayne Connell
• The influence of relationships on engagement in an Australian construction industry suicide prevention program - Jorgen Gullestrup
• Contemporary suicide, self-harm and overdose prevention training in a large public mental health service - Anna Asnicar and Tessa Clarkson

• Community wellbeing as suicide prevention: stories from the Break O’Day Wellbeing Project in rural Tasmania - Laura Grattidge
• Multi-level suicide prevention intervention in a small NZ community - Mike M ANG
• Wagga City Wanderers: Building a Club Culture of Wellbeing - Ned Evans

• Engaging men in crisis support: Results of a world-first Randomised Controlled Trial - Jane Pirkis
• Men's Mental Health Advocacy in WA - Adrian Munro
• Disruptive men's suicide prevention. Torque it out’s community-driven model that can be done anywhere anytime. - Jade Burgmann

• Championing Change: Building LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Through the MindOut Champions Project - Terence Humphreys and Maria Tchan
• Voices of Experience: Transforming Suicide Prevention Through Bicultural Leadership and Community-Led Training - Bethany Farley, Nuha Abdul Razaq and Yassmen Yahya

• Social Media to Communicate Suicidality by Young People in Rural and Remote New South Wales - Annie Fardell Hartley
• Outcomes of a multi-stakeholder collaboration and co-design digital psychosocial needs-based assessment protocol for young people - Jacinta Hawgood and Grace Sholl
• Food for Thought: Integrating disordered eating into holistic, school-based suicide prevention for young people - Jessica Morgan

Dress Code:  Elegant Unity – Dress in Your Cultural Best

Guests are invited to wear elegant attire inspired by their cultural heritage, background, or identity. This dress code ties in with the conference theme United Voices, Brighter Futures and celebrates diversity and unity, encouraging guests to express pride in their culture through traditional garments, patterns, or accessories that reflect their personal story.

Examples: Sarees, barongs, kilts, qipaos, agbadas, hanboks, or suits and dresses complemented by culturally inspired details.