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"A national strategy is only as strong as the people carrying it out on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The workforce enabler is the part every community organisation can act on now, without waiting for the next funding round." Audrey Bevan, CEO, CALM Suicide Programs |
The National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025-2035 is Australia's 10-year plan to reduce suicidal distress, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide. Released in February 2025, it moves suicide prevention beyond hospitals and into communities, and names a stronger, better-trained workforce as a critical enabler. For community, health and government organisations, staff capability is now a strategic priority, not an optional extra.
The Strategy is the first major deliverable of the National Suicide Prevention Office. It brings together evidence from people with lived and living experience of suicide, current research, and recommendations from earlier inquiries and reports.
It is organised into three domains. Prevention focuses on stopping people reaching suicidal distress in the first place. Support focuses on making sure that when someone is in distress, help is accessible, compassionate and effective. Critical Enablers covers the things that hold the system together: data, research, accountability, lived experience leadership and the workforce.
Across those domains sit 14 objectives and 106 recommended actions, endorsed by the Australian Government.
The biggest shift in the Strategy is where it expects suicide prevention to happen. It explicitly extends prevention beyond hospitals and mental health units, and asks governments, services and communities to address the circumstances that lead to distress before they escalate.
Those circumstances are the daily work of the community sector: housing insecurity, family violence, financial hardship, relationship breakdown, isolation and grief. ABS data for 2024 shows that alongside mental health conditions, problems in spousal relationships were among the most commonly recorded risk factors for people who died by suicide. In other words, the people most likely to notice early distress are often case workers, housing officers, family support workers and reception staff, not clinicians.
The Strategy calls for a stronger suicide prevention workforce. The supporting evidence brief on workforce and community capability describes a broad definition of that workforce: anyone likely to interact with, or make decisions that affect, someone who may be vulnerable to suicide.
That definition matters. It means a DV refuge worker, a youth worker or a disability support coordinator is part of the suicide prevention workforce, whether or not "suicide prevention" appears in their job description. It also means organisations have a role in making sure those staff are equipped for the conversations they are already having.
CALM Suicide Programs was built for exactly the workforce the Strategy describes: frontline people in community, health and government settings who may not be mental health professionals. Programs are accredited by Suicide Prevention Australia, trauma-informed, and designed to stack across roles, from awareness through to intervention and train-the-trainer. Culturally adapted programs include CALM Yarn for First Nations communities and Queer CALM for LGBTIQ+ communities, and every program is measured through pre- and post-training confidence data.
What is the National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025-2035?
It is Australia's national 10-year plan to reduce suicidal distress, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide. Released in February 2025, it has three domains (Prevention, Support and Critical Enablers), 14 objectives and 106 recommended actions.
Who leads the National Suicide Prevention Strategy?
The Strategy was developed and released by the Australian Government and the National Suicide Prevention Office (NSPO), with input from people with lived and living experience of suicide.
Does the Strategy require organisations to train their staff in suicide prevention?
The Strategy is a national framework, not legislation. However, it identifies workforce capability as a critical enabler and adopts a broad definition of the suicide prevention workforce, which signals where governments and commissioners are heading.
How does it relate to the First Nations suicide prevention strategy?
It was designed to work alongside the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025-2035, which sets out priorities led by and for First Nations communities.
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