Suicide First Aid – Lite

Aims and target audience

The Suicide First Aid Lite (Virtual) course gives learners the knowledge and tools to understand that suicide is one of the most preventable deaths and some basic skills can help someone with thoughts of suicide stay safe from their thoughts and stay alive. Suicide First Aid Lite training offers learning outcomes that are knowledge based and factual. This training can be used as a stand-alone programme or as the first part of a journey to learn suicide prevention skills.

SFA Lite is comprised of 2 parts, each 90 minutes duration. The programme teaches the skills needed to identify someone who may be thinking about suicide and to pass the person onto a suicide first aider.

Learning outcomes

• The impact and value of personal and professional experience with suicide
• Barriers that prevent people at risk seeking help
• Prevalence of suicide thoughts and suicide behaviours
• The Signs of Suicide and the Suicide-Safety Guide
• Partnership working and community resources

Delivery methods and styles

Taught over 3.5 hours using tutor facilitated Socratic learning, tutor-led role- play, minilectures, group work and audio-visual presentations. This is a highly interactive and emotionally engaging learning experience Available online or in-person.

The information in SFA: Lite is easy to grasp for people of all skill levels and those with no prior knowledge of the subject. No previous experience or training is necessary. Participants will be asked to self reflect and empathise with a person having thoughts of suicide.

Knowledge and skills required of the trainers

Trainers have completed a 5 day ‘Training For Trainers’ course with National Centre for Suicide Prevention Training.

Involvement of people with lived experience

The main audio-visual story in the courses, ‘I’m Really Glad You Told Me’ was a film developed with Jonny Benjamin and Neil Laybourn. This is their story, which has been shared quite openly in previous speaking engagements etc and comes with the core messages which support the training provided in SFA. Interweaved throughout this is another story, written by our team based on personal experience and client work which was consensually shared, about two men called Rob and Steve. Having both of these stories interweaved gives learners a chance to see a real time example of suicide intervention in action, whilst also discussing the benefits of reaching out to help and how this can impact people in the future.