For 10 years Adrian Lawford kept a secret from everyone at work. The TD Bank employee has battled anxiety and depression for most of his life, but never told a soul at the office until one day when he sat his manager down to come out “from behind the mask.” “It was a scary time,” he remembers.  Read the rest of this article at The Toronto Star…

The People’s Strength project was funded through Health Canada’s now-defunct Health Services Integration Fund, which was aimed at improving health-care delivery to First Nation and Inuit peoples

Three years before Attawapiskat First Nation was hit with its latest suicide crisis, the regional health authority that serves the community launched a federally funded suicide-prevention project – an $800,000 mental-health initiative that fell far short of the ambitious vision declared at the outset.  Read the rest of this story at The Globe and Mail…

Natan Obed is the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national voice of Canada’s 60,000 Inuit

Contrary to popular belief, the high rates of suicide faced by Inuit are not an unexplainable phenomenon that warrants a way of thinking that is wholly different than the way suicide is thought about in the general population.  Read the rest of this article at The Globe and Mail…

Matt Dunae credits his friends – and particularly his now-wife – for sticking with him through the darkest times no matter how hard he tried to alienate them

It’s not hard to compare suicide to a bomb. Like a bomb, suicide happens with abrupt violence, obliterating the centre and leaving a gaping hole. Like a bomb it creates a jagged pile of rubble that survivors are forced to pick through and repair in its wake.  Read the rest of this article at Nanaimo News Bulletin…
Image credit: John McKinley, Nanaimo News Bulletin