Canmore Trust Wellbeing Conference 2024

Finding common paths towards hope and suicide prevention

05 December, 2024 / indepth

A ball of lanyard straps from the event.

The Canmore Trust hosted its two-day Wellbeing Conference in November at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Glasgow.

It brought together more than 200 doctors, nurses, veterinary surgeons and dentists, as members of the healthcare professions with the highest rates of suicide, to offer mutual support, to encourage wellbeing, and to find common paths towards hope and suicide prevention. The Canmore Trust¹ was founded by John Gibson and his wife Isobel following the loss of their son Cameron, a young veterinary surgeon, in 2019.

The conference featured a number of renowned speakers, including Professor Rory O’Connor,
President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention²; Alice Hendy MBE, founder of the award-winning charity R;pple³; Fiona Drouet MBE, founder of EmilyTest⁴; Richard McCann⁵, internationally-acclaimed motivational speaker and author of Just a Boy; and Haylis Smith, Suicide Prevention Scotland’s National⁶ National Delivery Lead.

We need to make sure that compassion is embedded everywhere but, also, we need to be self-compassionate

On the Friday evening there was a fundraising dinner, with the theme ‘Celebrating Life’, which was hosted by BBC weather presenter, and Canmore Trust ambassador, Judith Ralston.

Professor O’Connor spoke about his 30 years working to understand and prevent suicide, including co-leading NQ Mental Health Research’s Gone Too Soon project⁷, which brought together a 40-strong multidisciplinary global team of academic, policy, clinical, and lived and living experience experts with the specific aim of understanding the driving forces behind these deaths and what needs to be done to
tackle this public health crisis.

The work resulted in the paper Gone Too Soon: priorities for action to prevent premature mortality associated with mental illness and mental distress⁸. This identified 12 key risk factors and mechanisms and 18 actionable solutions across three organising principles: the integration of mental and physical health care, the prioritisation of prevention while strengthening treatment, and the optimisation of intervention synergies across socialecological levels and the intervention cycle.

Professor O’Connor said that these solutions included: accessible, integrated, high-quality primary care, early life, workplace, and community-based interventions co-designed by the people they should serve, decriminalisation of suicide [in countries where that remains an issue] and restriction of access to lethal means, stigma reduction, reduction of income, gender and racial inequality and increased investment.

He also spoke about the development of the IMV Model⁹, a recognition that suicide is characterised by
a complex interplay of biology, psychology, environment and culture “and that we need to move beyond psychiatric categories if we are to further understand the causes of suicidal malaise”.

Professor O’Connor also highlighted that 75 per cent of suicides are by men and that more work needs be done to understand the causes.

“For me,” he said, “suicide prevention is about two things. First thing is, can we stop people becoming suicidal in the first place? If we can’t do that, can we stop them acting on their thoughts of suicide? There’s so much evidence that if we can work collaboratively with individuals who are vulnerable, that we can hopefully save lives in terms of restricting access to the means of suicide.”

Professor O’Connor said Scotland was leading the way with some of its initiatives, such as the Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme¹⁰. The DBI’s ‘ask once get help fast’ approach has two complementary levels.

The first is provided by frontline staff, such as NHS 24, emergency departments and the police and ambulance services who can offer a “seamless referral, with confidence and clarity”, to DBI Level 2. This second level is provided by trained third sector staff who contact the person within 24-hours and provide “compassionate, problem-solving support, wellness and distress management planning, supported connections and signposting for a period of around 14 days”.

Professor O’Connor concluded: “We need to make sure that compassion is embedded everywhere but, also, we need to be self-compassionate. As John Gibson said, in introducing the conference, it’s tough working in this area. We all have our own experiences. We need to look after ourselves and be kind to ourselves. We need to embrace the complexity. We need to rethink models of care.

“Lastly, there is connection. Anything we can do that promotes human connection, potentially saves lives. Anything we can do, which interrupts those suicide thoughts – we know suicidal thoughts cause a wave of intensity – anything we can do, a WhatsApp message, a phone call, a smile, can save people’s lives.”

If you need help, you can talk to someone at any of the organisations listed on The Canmore Trust website.

The regulator’s view

Theresa Thorp, Executive Director of Regulation at the GDC, spoke at the conference. She said: “We are aware of the acute pressures within the NHS and access, in particular, to NHS dental services. We recognise that this has an impact on the wellbeing of patients and dental professionals. Overall, the dental sector and those who work in it are experiencing a lot of pressure.”

GDC commissioned research had shown that while most registrants who had been involved in fitness to practise investigations or hearings perceived the outcome to have been fair, they added that the process itself had negatively impacted their health, wellbeing, behaviour and practice. In the week of the conference, the GDC reported on dental professionals who died while fitness to practise concerns were investigated or remediated.

The report made clear that some individuals took their own life while fitness to practise concerns were being investigated or remediated. “Any death by suicide is a tragedy,” she said. “The impact on the health and wellbeing of dental professionals during what we know can be a difficult and stressful process is of deep concern to us. In addition to acknowledging that the GDC must do better, the GDC’s report serves as a call for everyone in the dental sector to reflect on the environment, systems and processes involved in being a dental professional.

“Looking ahead, the GDC’s direction of travel is moving towards supporting positive professional practice and away from an enforcement culture. We want to help practitioners to avoid becoming subject
to regulatory proceedings in the first place. One way we do that is by setting and assuring the standards for undergraduate education, to ensure that people joining the register are safe. Another is that we provide guidance on the professional standards required throughout a dental professional’s career.

“There is more we would like to do to share learning from fitness to practise, and to work with stakeholders to help dental professionals to understand what is expected of them. Ultimately within fitness to practise, we want to get faster, without compromising quality outcomes, and make sure the process is fair to witnesses and registrants. And this is to serve our overarching objective, which
is to protect the public.”

Read Theresa Thorp’s speech in full.