‘You could feel the love and support’ – Portsmouth’s first suicide awareness event a huge success

Let's Get Talking About Suicide was a free event held in Victoria Park last Saturday to coincide with the annual World Suicide Prevention Day.

The event was organised by Sarah Mitas, who lost her father Richard Dobson to suicide when she was 13, and Lara Kynvin, who survived a suicide attempt.

There were “relevant services and groups” while visitors could take part in wellbeing, creative and exercise workshops.

In addition, visitors were asked to bring along photographs of loved ones lost to suicide and pin them up in a memorial tent.

“It was absolutely brilliant, it went really well,” Sarah told The News.

“It sounds cheesy, but you could feel the love and support all around.

“We weren’t sure how it would go, but we knew it was something the city needed.

“We’ve had some amazing feedback from the support groups that attended, people really opened up to them.

“We’re hopeful the event will have helped. It’s opened up a lot of conversations and is changing people’s perceptions of mental health.”

Sarah admits that societal reactions to suicide have improved in the past decade, but the journey is far from over.

“There’s a lot of help out there now,” she said. “More than there ever was before. There’s lots of services in the city where you can have a chat, I was really humbled to find out how many.

“People are more willing to talk about things now. There’s less of a stigma (about suicide), it’s less of a taboo, but there’s still a long way to go.

“We shouldn’t be scared of using the word ‘suicide’. It needs to be talked about.

“We don’t want things brushed under the carpet, if people do that then we’ve lost them.”

Sarah added: “The memorial tent was so moving, it showed how many people we have lost to suicide.

“There were lots of hugs and tears, and the feeling of love in that tent was palpable.”

Office for National Statistics figures show there were 56 deaths from suicide registered in Portsmouth between the start of 2019 and the end of 2021 Sadly, that equates to an average of one death every 20 days.

There were 5,583 suicides registered nationally in 2021, and Sarah said: “It’s not just numbers, these are people’s lives.

“We need to remember who these people were. They shouldn’t be defined by how they died - that’s not how they should be remembered.”

The Let's Get Talking About Suicide event is already booked in to return again in 2024, on the corresponding weekend in September.

Sarah is also hoping the national Baton of Hope walk could include Portsmouth on its agenda next year.

The BoH started in Glasgow back in June, and visited a number of cities - Brighton was the only one on the south coast - prior to ending in London on July 5.

Due to the success of last weekend’s event, regular workshops and drop-in sessions will also be organised in Portsmouth.