A Global Vision for Crisis Support: Alan Woodward's Hope for the Future

Episode Description:

Alan Woodward has spent decades strengthening crisis services around the world, from answering calls on the Lifeline crisis line to advising government leaders and building new programs. In this episode, Alan reflects on what it takes to face hard moments, how crisis services save lives, and why kindness (to others and ourselves) matters more than we realise.

With host Prof. Tony Pisani, they explore the lessons Alan learned growing up in a coastal city in Australia, navigating career changes, managing anxiety, and staying committed to making the world a better place.

Key Themes

• The lifesaving role of and need for 24/7 crisis lines
• Australia’s new National Suicide Prevention Strategy: moving prevention upstream
• Addressing social determinants of suicide: lessons from the “Robodebt” policy
• A global push to decriminalise suicide
• Lived experience as a game-changer in policy and service design
• Alan's journey with high-functioning anxiety, self-kindness, and purpose

Guest:

•  Alan Woodward is a global leader in crisis support and suicide prevention. His work spans decades of service as a researcher, advocate, and advisor to governments and organisations, with deep roots in community-based care.

Host: 

• Professor Tony Pisani is a professor, clinician, and founder of SafeSide Prevention, leading its mission to build safer, more connected military, health, education, and workplace communities.

Referenced Resources (Timestamped):

• Madelyn Gould, Columbia University – suicide prevention research.
• Consensus Statement on Crisis Support from international crisis line networks
• International Association for Suicide Prevention – work on decriminalisation of suicide
• Lifeline International – Alan’s current organisation
• Ghana's Decriminalisation of Suicide – paper
• Australia’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy – released this year 
• Professor Rory O’Connor – theory of suicide and the role of entrapment
• Royal Commission into Robodebt (Australia) – Submission from Suicide Prevention Australia

Transcript

Tony: Welcome to the Never The Same Podcast where we explore personal and professionaal learning, how people and their ideas change over time and often the intersection with suicide prevention. Today I am happy to share with you a conversation I had with Alan Woodward, who has contributed a great deal to the development and maturity of crisis support services in Australia and really around the world.

He's been an advisor to government, a researcher, program evaluator, just a rich set of experiences. We not only explore things about the sectors where he's worked in but also personal matters like navigating a career, handling anxiety, how to find your purpose. And this was a conversation I really treasure and I think you will too.

While I am a faculty member at the University of Rochester. This work is separate from my role there but part of the same mission to try to bring resources and research to light to support suicide prevention and to promote health and wellbeing. Well, thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me.

Alan: Yeah, my pleasure.

Tony: You mentioned when I proposed us getting together that it would be special to film here in Wollongong, since it's your hometown. Could you talk about how this place, what it means to you and why it seemed special to be here?

Alan: Yeah. Well it is home. I lived the first 16 years of my life in Wollongong, proper and then the last 25 years or so I've lived Kiama which is just to the South, so this region is where I've lived most of my life and I do feel very connected to it. The reason I say it's 'special' is I think to reflect on things I've done in my life, for one, it's a really beautiful place.

Tony: Yeah, maybe describe for people who have never been here.

Alan: Yeah.

Tony: Could you describe what it's like?

Alan: It's a narrow coastal strip with the ocean on one side and an escarpment to the west. So you have the mountains and the sea. You have the bush and the ocean and it's a very beautiful place and quite a special place. Our First Nations people that lived here for thousands of years prior to European occupation, had developed very real understandings of the connection with the geography and the landscape and their stories and their culture

inform us of why this is a special place. But for me it was just a really good place to grow up. It was a charmed childhood back in the day because there was so much freedom and you could just walk out, walk up the road to the bush. So I'd go exploring in the bush with my friends, then you'd go down the beach.

You had all this nature around, available to you and it was fairly easy to get around because it's not, wasn't that big a city in those days. It still isn't particularly big so, I just get on a bicycle and go. And I think what I've learned out of that is that having that sort of connection with place is actually really important in your life.

It also taught me that you could always go back to nature to find some replenishment and to feel maybe a bit of that connection. So still today, one of the things I'll do if I have felt a little bit, too much work, too much distraction is to take some time and go up into the bush or just go, and go to the beach for a bit.

Yeah. So it is a special place but it is also a place that has I guess given me some understandings right from the early days of, I guess life and how things work.

Tony: Yeah. So say more about that.

Alan: Well I think growing up in Wollongong, which is a steel city, back in the day and it still is a steel city, so it was an in industrial.

Tony: Steel, yeah.

Alan: Industrial area. And it was, it was not Sydney. So being in Wollongong you were always something of an outsider and when I was a young bloke growing up in this area, it wasn't particularly regarded as a great place to live. I think that was a shame but it was more renowned for the very poor air quality and jokes about the sky being black and all that sort of stuff, because it was so industrial and a bit of a sort, strange place away from the real

action, which was always Sydney and so on. It was also a place where there was a lot of socio-economic disadvantage. A lot of people struggling and it was a bit known for that. That it was a place where there wasn't a lot of wealth that reinforced I think the idea was a bit of a place where you were an outsider.

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: But I think the other thing which I think was a great strength of the area that also helped shape how I saw the world was the incredible cultural diversity. So from really the post-war era, migrants from all over the world came to this area to work in the Steelworks or related industries. That meant that we had people with different language and cultural backgrounds all around us. I never thought much of this until later in life when I was so

surprised to see some pushback in this country around people from migrant backgrounds and some of the people who were pushing that including, I have to say amongst people I'd known and met in my life, it was because they'd never had it before. You know, they'd grown up in this incredibly monochromatic white Anglo environment, so they'd, for them, it

was a strange thing, whereas for me I was fortunate in that it was just natural to have people from all different backgrounds around, walking in the streets, at school, social gatherings, whatever.

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: And yeah.

Tony: Essentially, I'm be keen to explore how these things work their way through a career but before we do that, for people who wouldn't be familiar with your work, could you describe what you do and the part that you have played in crisis services and suicide prevention?

Alan: Yeah. My current role is, I do work with Lifeline International which is a global charity supporting crisis lines, crisis support services in 27 countries now, so including many countries in Africa region, many in the Pacific and Asian regions as well as the US and UK. So my role there is as a policy advocate, so I'm keen to sort of promote those services and advocate for their recognition and investment in the policy paradigms that operate around

mental health and suicide prevention.

Tony: How did you get into crisis services originally?

Alan: It was more than 20 years ago and it was really quite accidental. I was working as a consultant that did work around human services broadly, so social and health services. Particularly in regional areas, as an evaluator as I guess looking into organisational and program delivery issues and some policy development. I got asked to do some work for Lifeline in this region, in Wollongong to evaluate a service that's...

Tony: And lifeline for people you know Internationally, who might not know, could you?

Alan: Alright. Lifeline is a charity here in Australia that has operated a crisis line for just over 60 years and is a very well known name in Australia. You call Lifeline. Lifeline is spread throughout the country, so while it operates on telephone and online and text, it also has community-based programs. So there's a Lifeline Center here in Wollongong and that was one that first I got involved in and got to meet some of the people and I was truly

fascinated. To learn more about the service I was evaluating a secondary service, actually one that was more a specialised mental health information service but I was fascinated with the notion of the crisis line. The other thing that drew me in was in my work doing regional service evaluations and coordination efforts, I could see the need for this sort of service that sat there with no entry requirements, no assessment, no charge even other

than the phone call - open to anybody on any issue, and from there to provide a basic frontline level of support and I thought this is really good. But I didn't know much about Lifeline before that time.

Tony: Yeah. And you said it fascinated you?

Alan: It did.

Tony: What captured your imagination about it?

Alan: I guess I was really interested in how it had evolved in Australia. That somebody well back in 1963, the superintendent of the Wesley Mission, the Methodist Mission in Sydney, Alan Walker, and a number of others working around him were the ones who saw the need to establish the service.

And that reflected similar moves, elsewhere in the world. The Samaritans in the UK, the US, particularly with the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center and the crisis line there but all around the world in the post fifties, sixties, was this idea that you could use a telephone to reach people, which I think is still cool. Still cool idea. But the thing I think that I really liked about it was just so open and available and often when you're looking at services,

particularly funded services, that they cater to a fairly narrow group.

Tony: There's always some ticket. There's always some ticket of entry.

Alan: Yeah. There's eligibility criteria, they do something. And you know, you need all that for sure but we also need a basic form of psychosocial support which is what the crisis support services are and I was intrigued with it because of the mental health dimension. I'd come out of social policy and social services in my working life; housing, ageing, the provision of welfare supports but I had really cottoned on to the issue of the overlay with

mental health. It just cropped up time and time again in some of the work I'd been doing and indeed some of the work I had when I was working in government. Housing for example, there's just such a connection between a housing need and a mental health issue and vice versa. So, I was really intrigued with what Lifeline was doing and then the aspect of suicide was one that I became more aware of from the work of Lifeline. And again, it

touched a nerve for me because I had seen the issue of suicide in the communities and I had experienced the loss of people to suicide myself. So the idea that you could provide immediate response to someone who was in deep distress and despair, I thought was a really good thing to do and I was remarkably, when you consider how long Lifeline had been around, I was quite unaware of just how much it was doing. I also loved the people.

The people in Lifeline were just so, so good. So I felt an affinity and I started doing some more work advising on things and eventually it became apparent that I could contribute more to lifeline nationally because they had reached a point where they needed to undertake serious organisational reform, including the technology reforms but also governance and, you know, organisational reform, changes and I was very fortunate to be

asked if I would contribute and work full time. So I said to my wife, "We've got this job offer". So, I was happily working in this region and the job would involve a move to Canberra but we thought we'd do that and thought, oh, it might just do it for a couple of years and I ended up staying with Lifeline Australia for 14 years. Not all the time in Canberra, I did eventually move back into my home ranch.

Tony: Well done.

Alan: But I worked with them and I did a whole range of positions and contributions.

Tony: Including leading the organisation?

Alan: Well, I was one of the leadership team. Yes, I was one of the senior executive team in that sense and a leader but I'd rather think of myself as working in a National office, it was supporting the people who were doing things. The other thing that I did during the early times with Lifeline was I volunteered to go on the phones and that was just truly one of the most amazing experiences in my life.

So I went into the training and went through all that I needed to learn but the other thing that was really powerful was the training to be a crisis line worker was a process of your own reflection. And that was difficult at times but very, very rich. And then to actually go on phones and have the privilege of being there to listen and have an interaction or conversation with someone who might be revealing the very innermost things in their life,

is an absolute privilege but I also learned so much from those people.

Tony: Yeah. What, did you learn?

Alan: I learned firstly, that they were all quite different and people have this whole range of things that might be going on in their life and how they wanted to have that conversation. But I also learned that they were people who were often dealing with enormous difficulty in life. And I suppose that also struck a chord with me because I have always felt something for those who have a lot of difficulty. So you asked about how the Wollongong origins for me

has shaped my life? Well, growing up in a place where there was a lot of great stuff in a very beautiful environment but with a lot of people struggling. You couldn't help but notice that and I had many of my friends who went through enormous difficulties. Wollongong in the seventies was terribly affected by the drugs coming in and that affected some of my friends, terribly. In the eighties there was the economic downturn. We saw a large part

of the Steelworks shut down and the incredible economic hit to the region but also I think, that thing about the 'outsiders' has always been something that I've been alert to and a lot of the people I found myself talking to on the Lifeline crisis line, themselves were feeling outsiders and the crisis line was giving them somewhere where they could feel accepted and talk about what they wanted to talk.

Tony: Would they say that, they felt like that or you could sense it, or maybe a little of both?

Alan: A little of both, yes. A little of both. Fast forward to when I did my PhD research which was on the experiences of people calling the crisis line. So I recruited 58 participants, people who used Lifeline Service and I asked them in several in-depth interviews about their experiences using the service.

One of the things that really did come forward that they liked about the service, when it really did work well for them, was that they felt welcome. And that they felt as a person they could talk about what was important to them and say the things they needed to say. And sometimes they couldn't say those things to anybody else.

So sometimes people would say that.

Tony: Yeah,

Alan: They would say, "I've told you things that nobody else has ever heard."

Tony: So, I want to get more into your research and the research foundation but before that you mentioned being shaped by some of those early experiences and I know from a previous conversations, your parents were very influential and your father, in shaping some of how you see things and advocate. Could you talk about that?

Alan: Yeah, well my parents were in some ways not extraordinary people in the way the world often looks at people. They weren't famous but they were very good people. They were both teachers and they were both very committed evangelical Christians and they had both lived very interesting lives before they got married and continued to live interesting lives because they were very active in the world, and some of that was I guess because of their

religious faith, to reach out, that's the evangelical faith is to reach out and attract people to the faith. But it was a lot more than that for my parents, their evangelical faith was shaped really by the Methodist movement which saw a very strong work ethic and sense of social responsibility. They had lived in Kenya, Africa just before I was born and in fact, I was conceived in Kenya. My father was working at a school to provide a high quality education for academically talented African students and many of the students at that school in

Meseno in Kenya went on to become political and social and religious leaders in Kenya as it achieved independence the year after I was born, but you know, he was a committed teacher but he was also a, he had a strong faith and he was a ordained priest in the Anglican Church. My mother was also a teacher and she had done brilliantly in her studies. She had a formidable intellect. She was very smart and she had done very well at school

and she went to Sydney University and studied teaching because in those days, really the options for a woman at University in Australia, sadly were teaching or nursing, or health. Well, she chose teaching and she was a very good teacher but the first teaching appointment she took after she finished University, was in India at Kalimpong, up near the Nepalese border where she worked in a school that had been set up for children who had

been parented by both Indian and European parents. So the children in fact were cast out often from their communities because of the.

Tony: Outsiders.

Alan: "They were outsiders." They were very much outsiders. So the school had been set up to provide those children with an education so that they could go with life with that advantage and that was her first post. She was always interested in the rights of people who didn't have so many rights. So my parents really left that example to me, it just filtered through the way our family operated and the way we would talk about things. And here in Wollongong, my father was a teacher at a school and my mother taught at a another school

but they were very active in the community. Now that I guess has been something that I've picked up, is that you can actually in your life find ways to try and make things better for others, to use what opportunities you have to help others, not in a paternalistic or self ingratiating way but simply because it's a good thing to do and of course it's, it is rewarding to do that and to feel that you contributing but I think also a basic belief that you

can work to make the world a better place. And again, my parents in that era is interesting and we probably got some things to learn in our current world. My parents went to University immediately after the Second World War. The world at a at large was in recovery mode from that war but there was amongst the younger people at the University, a very real sense of making the world a better place. We saw the emergence of the

United Nations and the ideas of global agreements and collaboration that represented of making the world a better place. The work of the crisis lines was also in that vein. It was, we can reach out to people who were struggling and see if we can help them through it. It was about making the world a better place.

Tony: Yeah. I think sometimes people feel a little embarrassed to try to say that nowadays. I think one thing i've noticed in talking with kind of different, in this setting, on this podcast, talking with people who have been very accomplished is that, they don't seem afraid to say that they're trying to do that. But I think many times people are hesitant, like it's prideful or it's somehow either futile and it's not possible or you're being grandiose but it seems like having that commitment to making a difference is deep for you and it doesn't feel to me

grandiose or proud or anything so, how can people in an environment that can be sometimes cynical or maybe yeah, sort of discouraging of idealism, how can people hold onto that?

Alan: Well, I think it can be difficult because as you say, Tony, there are a lot of voices out there telling you that it's either not possible or desirable. But you know, I think where I come back to is I think we have to stand back and simply accept our common humanity. And in doing that, yes we will see ways that we might be able to help others make the world a better place, all those ideals. But part of it too is just understanding who we are and where we fit

in all this. That we do share a common humanity and I think that's probably the bedrock belief. If you can't come at that belief then you are gonna struggle to see why you would want to support anyone else, try and make the world a better place or, preserve, you know, the nature that we have in our planet. But if you accept that we have this common humanity then you might start to take an interest in others and in doing so, you discover

more about yourself. You know, it's one of the really curious conundrums about the human existence is that we actually gain more by being with others and providing some measure of 'interest' or 'care for others' than we do through individual pursuit alone.

Tony: That sounds really important. Yeah.

Alan: I think it is. I mean, I think many people probably most are more oriented towards seeing how they fit with others but you're right, there are a lot of voices out there that push it away.

Tony: Yeah. Or maybe I think for some in some generations, and I think I hear this from people who are either, I've heard this from people even in High School or in University who just feel like the, you know, maybe the problems are too big and who do I think I am to try to make a difference. What would you say to them?

Alan: Well, I think it's understandable. The problems are overwhelming at times. I mean, climate change is an overwhelming challenge and the more that collectively as humans we fail to even deploy our remarkable knowledge and technologies and abilities to addressing that. It's difficult not to feel some sense of being overwhelmed.

One of the things I have learned is that it's much more effective to concentrate on the things you may be able to do and some of that can even be quite, locally based. In my own life I've been fortunate to pursue the directions around social services and in more recent times, the crisis support services. Not with any greatest planning, I have to say very much almost an accidental pathway but a pathway that has been forged by steps taken.

And that's been what my life has been and I've been fortunate to meet so many wonderful people along the way to enjoy the journey with. I could have done other things in my life. When I left school, I trained to be a journalist. I entered a degree in journalism. I thought that was what I wanted to do 'cause I loved storytelling and public affairs and interested in the world and I thought that being a journalist, you know, I could really make a difference.

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: And I got two thirds of the way through my journalism degree and as things turned out, I became unwell and I had to take some time off my studies and during the time off I had from my studies, I realised that actually I wasn't a really great fit. That maybe it wasn't really what I wanted to do. I enjoyed and I still enjoy writing. I love the reading the newspaper and articles and public affairs but I don't think I ever had the personality makeup or probably dare I say the skills to be a good journalist.

And I think that was really in hindsight, worked out well for me. So I sort of found things that I could do and I think that's a good way to deal with being overwhelmed is just to wriggle around a bit and find the things that you can do because you'll probably find other people who relate to what you can do and you join them and you keep going.

Tony: Yeah. And you just start somewhere. If you just waited to decide, well I'm not gonna try journalism until I know I'm a good fit, you never would do anything. So and I think some people do feel that kind of, that kind of paralysis. Where it's like, I don't know if I would like this and I don't know if I would like that, but you got started. It didn't turn out to be and I'm sure that, I'm sure there sounds like there were some trials associated with that?

So it's not easy to go down a path, find it's the dead end and then retrace steps and go another one. But, it's my observation is that's actually more than norm, than anything and you can't get anywhere unless you're moving somewhere.

Alan: I think so and I do feel for a lot of young people these days 'cause I think they get a lot of pressure placed on them.

Tony: Yes.

Alan: More so than frankly I did when I was going through school and post school, at university. You know, there's pressure to be particular things or to achieve things or to have notoriety, presence.

Tony: Be an influencer.

Alan: Being an influencer or to have a certain income level so you can do things and I mean, I'm not anti ambition but I think the pressure that's placed on young people is extraordinary nowadays because it's created a sort of competition. And coming back to my theme, when you've got that sort of competition you're gonna have insiders and outsiders. And I don't think that's a good way for us to organise our society. I'm not a fan of dividing between the

insiders and the outsiders. I'm a fan of including everyone and valuing everybody, whatever they may be able to bring.

Tony: You've shared that you live with maybe what we've called high functioning anxiety which is a courageous thing to share. I wonder if you could talk about that and what you've learned about how to manage and channel anxiety.

Alan: Yeah, I guess I'd have to say that anxiety has been a... I wouldn't say a companion but has followed me in my life and what I mean by high functioning anxiety is that I seldom find myself unable to do things because I'm anxious. In fact, it tends to work the other way, it is when I get stressed, I tend to double down to try and do more and, which is not always a good thing but it's something I guess that I have come more to terms with and to

understand quite late in life. So in that sense I probably fit the stereotype of the white Anglo Australian male who goes through life trying to figure out things and then one day realises that there is a mental health dimension to all our lives. But for me it is an interesting journey in some ways that perhaps others could relate to?

There were a couple of things that had happened to me in the first few years of my life and I didn't really have much understanding of even what those things were and how they'd affected me until my mid fifties when I got a little bit more information about some events and things that had occurred.

I was able to piece together what had happened in the very early years of my life that had left me with a certain frailty in my mental health. That's how I would describe it. Not that I had a diagnosable condition but a frailty and that was always sitting there. I was aware of the frailty because it had sometimes hit me, including that time when I was in my first period of study at uni after leaving school, where I became physically unwell but I also

became very anxious and it was interesting then that when I went to the doctor who was able to deal with the virus that I'd caught and the physical ailments but made the observation of anxiety. And being the young bloke I was, I immediately put that aside and denied that as any factor to address.

And later in my life where I've had very stressful times, it's cropped up again. The events early in my life left me with a backroom narrative that was always saying, "You are not quite good enough." "You're not quite, good." And in times of pressure the narrative in the backroom would come in to the front room and that's what I think was really behind what I would loosely call this high functioning anxiety.

And it would manifest itself sometimes in my own self-talk about whether I could do something. So, what I would do is try even harder to show that I could do it, rather than necessarily stand back and try and work out what it was, why there was that voice in there. But as I said in my fifties, I became more able to put it all together with the information that I'd received and my own reflections and the benefit I think of a little bit of therapy that also

helped resolve what was in fact some residual trauma.

Tony: How, did you put those things together so many years later?

Alan: I think it was in part because I had some information that said, "Hey, actually something did happen to you." "You did have some experiences that may have affected how you thought and where this little voice in the back room had come from."

I think the other thing that I learned out of this was in understanding that there had been some things happened to me in my early life, I gave myself the permission to be kinder to myself. To think, well, maybe the voice in the back room is there because there was stuff going on. Maybe that's why I think that way, not because there's anything actually wrong with me. Not because I need to somehow, you know, do things beyond what's a reasonable

expectation and maybe I could be kinder to myself. So I think, you know, in the last number of years I've learned to stand back. It's still a risk if I get stressed, that the voice will come out and I can get very anxious and stressed which means I don't necessarily make good decisions. I don't, you know, it affects the relations with those close to me. It's not a good

thing but I don't think I'm all that different to a lot of people. I think one of the things I would encourage anyone is we all have things happen in their life. I had a couple of things happen that were maybe not everything everyone has but an awful lot do in this country and certainly, but to, understand that we are all shaped by what's happened to us as much as what's within us.

And this is one of the reasons I think that the movement into working in the crisis line struck a chord for me because when we were in crisis, which is the word we use in the world of crisis lines and there is a whole packet of very well developed theory around crisis, but essentially this experience of remarkable emotional intensity and stress and an inability to cope with stuff, you know, where you feel like, I dunno where to go.

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: It's something that can creep up on all of us but crisis is often because of things that have happened and if you've had stuff happen in your life earlier, it can come forward. It comes outta that back room and into your living room more than you'd like. You know, as I've said, when I first had that experience of significant anxiety to the point that it affected my functioning as a young student, I put it aside and I think that it didn't leave the house.

It was still in the back room even though I'd been able to send it out of the living room for a while. So, I think that's one of the things I've really learned and while we have so much discourse in the mental health area about conditions and treatments, which is fine because we do have conditions, they are a thing. And we do have treatments and people can get better so we should never stop that discourse but I think we also need to have the

conversations often about understanding that your mental health as a person is sometimes shaped by who you are and where you've been and to be able to stand back sometimes and understand where you've been, because you can then put it to rest.

Tony: Alan, what do you think it was about being in your mid fifties that made it the time when you were able to think about what had happened to you or address and work on or work with these experiences on your anxiety that you hadn't been able to do before?

Alan: I don't really know, Tony. As I said, there was some information about my early days as a baby and how that was.

Tony: Oh, new info that came in at that time?

Alan: Yeah.

Tony: I see.

Alan: Yeah, so I came to understand that my mother had a difficult time after my birth which I believe was related to mental health struggles. So that had an impact on me and there were other things that occurred to me that I had known something had happened and there were some images and I think I just got to a point where I could put it all together and figure out what had happened and why it had an effect on me.

I don't think this is that uncommon to be honest but I don't know why it was that it all just came together. And maybe I just exhausted myself with pretending that it wasn't there or trying to put things in the back room all the time and locked the door, that I'd exhausted my capability to not confront it.

Tony: It was time and maybe you were ready to. I mean, I think that people often will ask like, when is the right time to bring up a difficult thing with someone? And you know, my experience is that you'll be able to tell if somebody's ready if they answer you. If you bring something up and they change the subject, they bring something up, well maybe then they're not ready and it can come back around. I was curious too, you said about being

kinder to yourself. What does that look like?

Alan: Well I think it means that maybe not having such expectations that I can do all things or you know, whatever but I think also to simply understand more deeply that we are flawed characters who also get stuff thrown at them in their lives. So the chances of us being perfect are pretty minimal. I think it's, it, is maybe just something that comes with age and being able to slow down enough to actually take that on but I do recommend that. I think

that is one of the things that if we want to talk about people's mental health and wellbeing and indeed the prevention of suicide, if we can create spaces where people can be kind to themselves because the world often around them is not kind. People go through unimaginable difficulties. Now, I've had a fairly easy run at life, I think but I appreciate some people have had very complicated lives. But I do think that it's important for us to be able

to simply create spaces where people can be kind to themselves. In other words, not to load themselves up with expectations or to try and in some way discount experiences. What it is - is what it is.

Tony: I have a long time and dear friend who teaches English to high school students and she said that one of her goals is that by the end of working with these students, that they understand something really important and that is that everybody's broken, everybody's brave.

Alan: Yeah. Yeah, I like that.

Tony: And it seems like, that's part of being gentle with yourself was about sort of recognising things happen to everybody and you maybe don't have to be as hard on yourself about that?

Alan: I think so. It is also very much the spirit of the crisis line movement. Which is as you may know is very steeped in the idea of people as volunteers on crisis lines. I mean, most of the crisis lines worldwide use volunteers in some respects but even the paid personnel, you know, will have an attribute around that genuine, authentic concern for others. But it's often born out of the idea that yourself may have benefited from the care and concern of others.

So it's that two way relationship and I think that is one of the things that we can do in primary mental health through a community based approach, which is really what a crisis line is - to encourage people to support others in the knowledge that they may in fact receive support themselves on another occasion.

It's this interaction, this mutuality coming back to this idea that we are all common humanity. None of us has got things over another in that sense and if we work that way, we can be mutually supportive one to another as the time and occasions require it. So I think that is very much around the sorts of spaces we can create where people can feel heard, feel welcomed and in that sense, be kind to themselves.

Tony: So let's talk that a little bit about crisis services. Something that we've touched on a bit but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about crisis services and the role that you see them playing in suicide prevention?

Alan: Yeah, I see the crisis support services, the crisis lines, the online chat and text, you know, and the face-to-face sort of crisis support that you can have through a drop-in center or a community outreach. I see those as simply frontline basic levels of support that a person can access when they need it and an attribute of the crisis services is as the name suggests, is it's when people are really experiencing crisis, which usually means there is an

immediate need. A crisis support service that can be there straight away is fulfilling a function that most of the rest of the service system and community supports do not and that can make a world of difference that there is something that can respond at that very wee small hour of the morning, actually on the day when you are experiencing the emotional distress.

Those are the times where a person might need immediate support or response. And that's why I think the notion of having served a service that can do that because most of the others are not that responsive, that's a value in itself.

Tony: It fills a very clear need, it sounds like.

Alan: It does. It meets people right where they need to be. In suicide prevention, this is really critical because that time and that level of high distress is a dangerous time where self-harm and suicide may occur. So again, the timeliness of it is so important. The ability to meet somebody straight there and immediately provide some relief to that intense distress can literally save a life.

It can literally change the direction and that's something that I've experienced on the phones talking with people but also I know listening to people who have been there, they will say, "It broke that cycle." It broke the distress. It allowed me to calm down and that's what I needed right then and there. So there is this very great value in suicide prevention in having these immediately available crisis support services.

Tony: Yeah. So I know, you've done your own research and i'm also aware of broader research that's occurred in this area and could you share with people about the research around crisis services and maybe something about yours?

Alan: Yeah. It's an interesting thing to ask about the research because there is still a bit of a narrative out there from some who work in the field of either suicide prevention or mental health to say, well, we don't think there's much evidence for the crisis lines. I would disagree with that. I think there's been research work underway now for more than 50 years and there's quite a solid base to go from. But what they're usually saying is there are

not very many, if any, randomized control trials. So let's maybe just deal with that. There is research but it's not clinical trial research and I don't think you could ever actually do a clinical trial on crisis support services.

Tony: You mean, specifically assigning people not to get it or something like that?

Alan: Yeah, exactly.

Tony: As you know, a close colleague and somebody who I learned so much from and also adore is, Madeline Gould, at Columbia University. And yeah, I mean she's spent a whole career building that science and many other people have as well. Why do you think it persists the idea that there isn't research?

Alan: Oh, I'm not sure. I think part of it too is that the crisis lines and support services have generally, well, pretty much are delivered by civil society organisations. In that sense they do come at things from a different angle to many of the other services but also there's been a basic misunderstanding of what they're offering.

My own PhD research and my thesis, concludes with the statement that while many have perceived the crisis lines as a service of last resort, a sort of after hours phone or text number that somebody can get in touch with, to tie them over until the clinician is available in the next day, is a profound misunderstanding of what they're offering.

And rather what the services are offering is yes, an immediate response to crisis. That is, you know, the emotional intense, the distress, the coping malfunctioning, but also that it's providing us support, which is different from a treatment or other form of response so it gets confused about what it's actually doing.

One of the things that I'm very proud of to have been involved in, is to have worked with many colleagues around the world in the last year to issue a consensus statement from all the crisis line networks on what crisis support is.

Tony: Even is, yeah.

Alan: But people do misunderstand it and if they don't understand it then they might simply go to the conclusion, well, if I don't understand it, I don't think works.

Tony: Yeah. We'll provide that consensus statement in the links along with this episode but could you say what you think you most want people to hear and know from that statement what might be often misunderstood or something that you think is like, oh, I really hope that the world gets this?

Alan: I hope that the world would get that the experience of intense emotional distress is a likely occurrence in everybody's life at some stage. And that a primary mental health service system should be designed with that in mind and have a service available to meet people in their times of significant emotional distress or it could be an extension of that crisis can be brought about simply through significant experience of loneliness and isolation.

Those times where there's a need for immediate support usually because something has happened, or more existentially, a challenge but there is a need for a service system to have that built into it and that it's a very good idea to build, particularly primary mental health service systems on the assumption that a proportion of your population is going to need that all the time.

Tony: Could you share, just for people who might not be familiar with the terms, we have viewers and listeners with a whole range, many of whom are not at all in mental health.

Alan: Yeah.

Tony: What does primary mental health mean?

Alan: I think primary means, firstly that it is the first point of contact.

I think it also means that it's available where you are. So in crisis lines, that's often achieved through digital technologies: voice or telephone, text, online, social media, whatever. So that is a way of being immediately available but it also can be in the community. I think the other thing about primary is that it's about meeting people when they're experiencing something that creates the need.

Now the secondary and tertiary levels are more around trying to unpack what is the cause? What are the problems and how do you deal with those, but primary is always about meeting people when there is an expressed need and that's where I think we have often got a little bit out of sync in how we look at mental health and suicide prevention service systems.

We've put a lot of attention into the secondary and tertiary about what the problems are that we want to address with people and what the treatments or solutions might be. Whereas, right back at the start are simply people who have this great need and it is in its most immediate sense and a need to connect and to be able to be in communication. That's one of the things that mental health has often been the barrier and likewise in

suicide. In this country, Australia, a lot of the data has shown consistently over several decades that maybe half of those who die by suicide have no contact with other services in the 12 months prior to their death. Maybe not even within the month prior to their death. In mental health terms while we were able to estimate at a population need that about one in four of the Australian population will have a diagnosable mental health condition in the next 12 months.

We know that less than half of them will approach a doctor or a service of any description to identify that need and this is where I think having a support service that is actually about the person whose need is not carefully calculated. People don't often phone crisis lines and say, oh, I have this such and such mental health condition or I have this trait or whatever. They phone a crisis line because well, to use some of the quotes in my own

research participants, when I asked them, you know, what was happening when you called? "My son-in-law crashed my car." "I just had the most terrible verbal abuse from my ex-partner." "I just received notification that my tenancy or my housing has been curtailed." "I've just lost my job." "I just got news that my partner has chronic terminal illness." These are the things in life and sometimes they may not even appear to be the big calamitous

thing but they build on everything that's happened and the person is in crisis, so upset and unable to find the next step. And that's where we can meet a person and provide a humanitarian relief, that's what it is. It's saying you are suffering. You're in pain and we want to connect with you and support you through that so the pain is reduced and then things might improve.

Tony: Now, if my research about this is right, you founded a crisis research foundation. Is that right? Do I have it right?

Alan: The Lifeline Research Foundation.

Tony: Lifeline Research Foundation, yeah. Could you talk about that work and maybe why it's there and what your hope is for it?

Alan: So while I was with Lifeline Australia back in 2011 we decided to create the Lifeline Research Foundation. I was very lucky at the time in that the chief executive of the organisation had an academic background. So it wasn't a big sell to her at the time but it also had reached its time and place. I guess that Lifeline as a national charity should have a research program.

We realised that there was not a lot of research on the crisis line in Australia. There was some, some of which Lifeline Australia had been involved in partnership with academics on but we could do better and do more. And we also thought that forming a vehicle, like a research foundation might help us attract funding, which proved to be correct.

Over the years that I was involved we were able to receive dedicated grants of research funding, to do things. It was also because back in even 2010, 2011 it was a hard job to get policy makers and decision makers in governments or in the private and philanthropic world to see the value of the crisis lines. We had been successful in getting some

Commonwealth government funding and the state territory governments had provided some funding but we were up against the argument always of, "But what's the research base," and it is quite interesting to look back on it though I think there was good research around but a lot of it was US based or European based. We didn't have a lot of Australian based crisis line research but even to say back in 2010, there wasn't a whole lot around.

There has been an enormous amount of research work published on crisis support services, telephone and text and online in the last decade or just over that.

Tony: You must be proud of that.

Alan: I don't know that I've had an awful lot to do with it but I certainly am very pleased that's happened because I have worked as an evaluator for more than 30 years. I love evaluation as a way of finding out how things work and how you can improve programs or services or policies and so on. So I have always thought that it's important to have data. Data against measures if you like research evidence to draw on, or even to have well-developed

theories of change and frameworks that can explain what you intend to do so you can check against the intended results and outcomes. And I think in the world of crisis lines and support services we have dramatically increased the spread of that worldwide, not only in the Western countries but also there's quite a parcels of work from Asian countries and we're starting to see some research efforts in lower resource countries, which is

clearly what we would like to advance in the next decade or two.

Tony: I'd like to shift gears a little bit. I think it's very related work but in a different vein, is work on decriminalisation of suicide that I know that you've been involved with. First of all, can you describe what decriminalisation is and just talk about why that's important to you?

Alan: I am involved through the work at Lifeline International, as an advocate for the decriminalisation of suicide and join with many others around the world from various backgrounds. A couple of years ago, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and others, started to put some focus on this issue.

Tony: And that is that in some countries, it is a crime to take your own life?

Alan: That is correct.

Tony: Could you talk about that because I don't think many people wouldn't know that at all or much about it and I'm curious to learn too.

Alan: Yes. It is something that, that isn't widely known. In fact, when we at Lifeline International came into it a couple of years ago and we started to make some further inquiries, we formed a partnership with the International Bar Association, which is a global network of legal

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: and human rights lawyers.

We discovered that there were 25 countries that had laws that criminalised suicide. In other words, they were laws that made it a crime for you to either attempt to end your life or for you to indicate your intention to end your life.

Tony: Okay. And I think that's one thing that people have to understand because some people hear suicide is criminalised well, if a person dies, how do you enforce that? But it's actually has an impact on people who are still alive.

Alan: It mostly does but the other very significant impact can be on the families of those who die by suicide.

Tony: Right.

Alan: Because if a person has died when the law says that their means of death is a crime, there can be detrimental impacts on the families. Not the least of which is that they may not be able to access the deceased assets. They may not have any insurance coverage. They may have action taken against themselves if they are suspected to have been party to the person's death. Moreover, there is the capacity for very real societal stigma and

discrimination because if a behaviour is deemed a crime, then often the families of any person who undertakes that behaviour will have a negative effect.

Tony: Yeah. Also, on top of a terrible loss that suicide is they also experience the effects of legal implications or at minimum what that means for the society and how they're viewed.

Alan: It can be huge. Professor Joseph Osafo from Ghana has often spoken about this, he's an advocate in that country for decriminalisation of suicide which has now occurred through changes to their laws. But I remember talking to Joseph and he described to me how families who had lost a child maybe or a relative to suicide were unable to find work anymore because no one would go to their business, unable to attend church, which is a

very big deal in a religious environment, were not invited to social activities and community events. In other words, their lives became very different. They were isolated. So, you know, at one level the decriminalisation of suicide is about changing a law but it's also about changing an outlook and a societal response to suicide. 25 countries back a couple of years ago, since then, Ghana has decriminalised suicide and we're hopeful that a few other

countries may take that step soon. We also found in our research another 20 or so countries where there were very ambiguous legal frameworks to the point that you could not be sure that there wasn't some potential for detrimental or punitive action to be taken if a person indicated intention to die by suicide. The laws have come about largely as Legacy laws. Possibly in some cases, longstanding cultural or religious beliefs that suicide is a very

bad thing which of course all of us would agree, but translated into a law in the hope that it would prevent people from even contemplating suicide. But also because many countries that have been colonised, by the United Kingdom in particular, had these laws placed into their penal codes during the time of colonial occupation. So Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, all the examples of that and there's not been a step taken to repeal the laws from the penal code.

So, you know there is two aspects. Some of it can be simply that the laws have come about through cultural and religious belief and extended unquestioned but in other circumstances the laws were a by-product of colonial occupations. They are still having a very real effect on literally hundreds of millions of people in the world. So it is a reform that could make a difference.

Tony: Yeah. Well thanks for educating me about this. I actually was not very aware, of course, at conferences i've heard that mentioned but really to some previous conversations with you and in this conversation. So I appreciate you raising awareness about that. I think a next step I'd like to take is you've done a lot of work with government.

Alan: Yes.

Tony: You've been an advisor to government, an advocate. I would love to hear your thinking about the role of government in suicide prevention. What the opportunities are, maybe what the limitations are. Could you just reflect on that?

Alan: Yeah, I started my working life in government where I worked for the state government in here in New South Wales for 13 years and I worked in a number of areas, including in the central part of government, working to the premier and doing reviews and work of agencies and portfolio areas.

And I've also worked, in related areas. I worked for the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (ICAC) to establish their education program, for example and I've worked for the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) looking at public service ethics. So public administration government has been a big part of my early career and in my later career where I've moved into the community and civil society organisations I've been

more on the other side of government to be arguing and encouraging government around policy, positions and investments. I think the thing is that governments have the potential to do enormous good for their populations, provided governments stay true to seeing that their role is above all things, to protect, to enable and to develop their people. Now, I am a believer in participative democracy in government that is there to serve the interests of the

people or the public interest and from that starting point, you can look at public policy, programs, government use of money, government behaviour against that backdrop.

Tony: But, do I hear a but in there somewhere?

Alan: There is a but always because there's a chance that governments are not always completely or primarily focused on the Public Interest and this is the tension, whatever the system of government. So myself, I am something of a cautious engager with government. I don't believe there is any particular political ideology that suddenly is going to be the very best over all others. But I do believe that governments that are responsive to their people

and transparent in their dealings with people are more likely to uphold the interests of the public at large. In terms of the work I've done, I've also understood the great dilemmas that governments deal with and to be fair to those who work in government and most people are in this country and I think most countries who are parliamentarians or officials are people who are genuinely trying to uphold the Public Interest and do things well.

So let's take that assumption generally. But the dilemmas are very much a real part of things and there's always a risk that people with whatever issue they may be raising, think that the governments can do far more than governments sometimes can.

Tony: Say more about that.

Alan: Well I think for example, governments are always trying to deal a pathway through trade-offs across a range of choices, none of which are perfect choices. So there is a risk that people say the government 'should' just do this or that, it may not even be possible. And there can sometimes be a way of simply sliding the responsibility to government to say, well, the government 'should' look after that, rather than thinking what could be done at a

community level or through business activity or others. So, I have a sympathy there for governments and a caution about asking. To move it a little bit from I guess the more airy fairy philosophising,

Tony: yeah.

Alan: when we come to something like suicide prevention, it's a good example of what some in public policy terms would call a wicked problem. It's a complicated human behaviour

Tony: Yes.

Alan: that has existed for countless centuries at least in Western civilisations, maybe not so much in First Nations as we know and for which the preventative mechanisms are a real mix of macro and micro initiatives, some of which are easy to achieve and many of which are costly and difficult to achieve.

Tony: Okay.

Alan: So if we come to governments about suicide prevention, while I think it would be fair to say that most governments around the world would easily agree with the statement that suicide prevention should occur. When we go to the next bit about how governments might do that, it becomes far more difficult and that's where I think those of us who are working in the field need to provide government with the information and advice and insights to help governments see how they can constructively contribute to the prevention of suicide.

Tony: Speaking of that, Australia has a new National Strategy.

Alan: Yes.

Tony: And, which I think is an effort to do just what you're saying, right? To try to identify what can be done. I wonder what your thoughts are about having a national strategy? If you want to share any thoughts you have or hopes for the current new strategy, I'd be really interested to hear about that.

Alan: Well, I'm very personally invested in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy in Australia because I have been an advocate for its existence for over a decade and I've been involved as an Advisor to the National Suicide Prevention Office and chaired the board, the advisory board to assist in the development process. So I am personally invested, so you might take from that, that I am very enthusiastic about us now having a National Suicide

Prevention Strategy. Why do I think it's important? I think it is going to give the governments at large, and in Australia that means Commonwealth, State, Territory, Local, as well as people in the community, directions and indications of what can be done. The thing that makes it a strategy in my opinion as distinct from previous plans or programs or initiatives, is that as a strategy it actually deals not only with what we might do for a person in suicidal

crisis and beyond but it also looks at what we might do to prevent a person becoming in suicidal crisis. So one thing I've said is this takes suicide prevention out of the hospitals and the mental health system and places suicide prevention in a range of other areas of activity where we can look at how do we really prevent people ever becoming in such distress and despair that they wish to end their life?

How can we see the signs earlier of that distress emerging and reach people and offer relief and support? Now practically speaking, when we know that the finances and indebtedness can be a driver for suicidal thoughts, for us to put preventative action in to even the existing services for financial counseling, debt relief, income support, and the people who provide that service to be trained and equipped to realise where the person's distress is the elevating and to then be able to make the offer authentically in a way that

will relieve the distress as well as deal with the, if you like, the content side of their financial situation. Also to even look further upstream. What can we do at a population level? Because we know certain things may lay down the groundwork for future vulnerability to suicide and that's why the National Strategy in Australia has as a big ticket item, investments in early childhood experiences.

Because what happens in those early years is going to affect a person's life later.

Tony: Which we've been talking about.

Alan: Which we've been talking about. So an investment in boosting our national attention to the early childhood years is going to pay a dividend in the prevention of suicide later down the track.

Tony: As you might know I'm also very enthusiastic about this strategy and have really been fascinated to see its development over time and watched this process from the inside- outside. Coming here, being here enough, working here a lot, being able to be part of it and but also observing it from a different context as well.

I do think it's a model for the world and I've shared before, including on this podcast that I think it's very intellectually rigorous and coherent in a way and I know there are steps being taken for Outcomes Framework as well. I'd be interested because you have seen government from so many different angles. I'd be curious what you would attribute that success, that excellence in this strategy? What would you attribute it to?

What are the processes or the kinds of people or whatever, just think of it, take it however, take that in whatever direction you want. How did it get in my view, so good?

Alan: It's an interesting question, Tony but I think in Australia there are many good people who've contributed to the development of the strategy and there are quite a number of people in this country who do know stuff about suicide prevention so it comes through but perhaps the single biggest game changer has been the extent to which those with lived experience perspectives have contributed to the development of this strategy.

Whereas the previous plans for suicide prevention, the service initiatives, the program investments have by and large been developed by people who provide, services, programs and initiatives, whereas now I think we are going to see this strategy question of maybe cause some rethinking about what actually is most helpful and effective from the perspective of the people who themselves may become suicidal, may have survived a

suicide attempt, or may have lost a loved one, and are bereaved by suicide. And those perspectives, I think we'll recalibrate our approach overall. The other thing that it really does signal and this has been reinforced by, if you like, the so called "expert community" of researchers and policy advisors or advocates, is that the strategies pushing hard for there to be what we might call macro initiatives. Let's address the things that are factors

that lead to suicide that are not necessarily health based. Because we also know that health is affected by what many people call the social determinants. Let me give a couple of examples, positively and negatively. One area of policy is that of income support and how people who are struggling financially through loss of work or disability might be supported in this country. Now, we have now got data that shows that there is a

vulnerability for those populations of people receiving income support to suicidal behaviour. It's not that surprising and it's been seen in other countries around the world. A couple of years ago, the Commonwealth Government through its department of Social Services or social service portfolio area, undertook an exercise supposedly to clean up where people were taking income support payments beyond what they were entitled to,

which is at one level a fair enough thing. As taxpayers money going out to support people should always go for what the agreed criteria is. There shouldn't be people taking money that they are not entitled to. But they used a technology sort of form of almost a AI type approach to run algorithms across the data sets and then issue letters of indebtedness to people without even double checking whether the individuals held that debt.

Yes, it had a very significant distressing effect on many of those people who already often quite financially disadvantaged and it was ruthless in its Administration. This led to, now it can be seen a number of people, dying by suicide. And I say that knowing that there is never just one reason why a person dies by suicide but we know that having looked through the backgrounds of several people in that situation who died by suicide that a

critical element was this sudden indebtedness in a ruthless way. In other words, that people felt they were backed into a corner with nowhere to go. Theory of suicide prevention tells us that entrapment is one of the

Tony: Humiliation.

Alan: Yeah. So you know, going back to Professor Rory O'Connor and others with their theory base that entrapment is one of the violation indicators. The movement from thinking about suicide or I don't know if my life is worth living, to enacting on it. And a Royal Commission into what was called the Robodebt policy of income support payments and in and debt recovery was seen as one of those factors, critical factor. So my hope is that with the

National Suicide Prevention Strategy, we will never have a policy like that by a government because there is enough put into the system to say governments need to consider the potential for this to prompt suicidal behaviour before they decide on a policy. In the same way that they do an economic assessment, environmental assessment, any other assessment of a policy proposal, there is an assessment for would this leave people more

vulnerable to suicide? And that's what I mean by some of the macro things or the more positive side of things, if we look at some of the programs around say, education and particularly education and support for people who are floundering in their education and possibly young people entering the Criminal Justice System. Governments could invest positively in those programs to support those younger people knowing that there is more

than simply a, recidivist nature to that behaviour and in doing so, start to prevent younger people getting into a cycle of disadvantage and despair. Governments could do that by investing in those programs and leading the community to say those young people that are struggling to attend school, who are struggling to perform in their school work or find it interesting are people that we will take an interest in and will do it much earlier through our

schools and our colleges and our community outreach. And that will also pay a dividend in the prevention of suicide down the track because one of the things that we know is that those who have had less educational opportunity in life are also more likely to consider suicide later in life. Now this is one of the things that the data is telling us, so it's not as though we've dreamed it up out of the sky.

Tony: That's really helpful. I'd like to look a little bit, I think talking about the National Strategy gets us thinking about the future because this has just been released as we're recording.

Alan: Yes.

Tony: and it has us thinking, I think about the future of, maybe in suicide prevention and crisis services and I realise that you don't really have a crystal ball on anything but you've seen a lot and that and I can hear as you're talking about, you're somebody who's, who notices patterns, over time. So I would just be curious what you see as the future, let's stick with crisis services for now. What do you see as the future?

Alan: Well, I hope the future is that every person on this planet will have access to a really good quality, immediately available crisis support service. That's where I'd like to see things head and that's the advocacy that I'll spend my years and my time in at the moment.

Tony: And right now, where are we in terms of that?

Alan: We're actually about two thirds of the countries in the world have an identifiable crisis support service. Which is interesting, I did this analysis myself not so long ago and I was frankly surprised as to how many countries had a service already in place. Now, maybe some of those services admittedly are small and some of them are much larger, some are very sophisticated digital services and some are literally a group of volunteers with a

handful of mobile phones who can be contacted but the fact of the matter is that around 138 countries on my reckoning have got a crisis support service in place. I can't think of any other social or health service in service systems and design that would have that sort of global reach.

Tony: It's interesting, it's almost like a universal impulse or intuition that this is needed.

Alan: I think so and this gives me encouragement that we actually have got a base that could be built upon and it's become a base because people in communities have seen the value of these services, often without any regard to what the evidence is or the professional opinion of mental health specialists. But simply seeing a practical need that if people are in distress, we should reach out and offer them some support and relief.

So, you know, often those services have been grown literally from very local and grassroots levels in the same way that Lifeline in Australia grew up in the same way as Samaritans grew up in Western countries. What I think this does is give us a sense that we could enlarge and develop that. So if there's 138 countries now, we'd like the 201 or whatever countries there are under the UN, all of them to have the services in place.

We'd like there to be no laws that criminalise suicide that almost literally make it a crime to contact these services. We would like there to be massive efforts to encourage people to use these services without stigma or any notion that it's somehow weird or you know, something that only weak people to do but to encourage people to say, "This is part of life and if you are feeling emotionally distressed and you've not got someone else around you,

here's the service." To use these services in times of things like natural disasters or where there is conflict and war or where there's anxiety around climate change impacts to actually, we have got so much stuff going on in the world for so many people. One thing that we could do as 'humanity' is simply make sure that every person on this planet has somebody who will welcome their call or contact or text, show an authentic concern for

them right there and then of whatever it is that they're upset about, listen to them and support them through how they work, through how to go ahead in the next hour, the next day, the next week. Because that in itself to me is a 'humanitarian response' to human need and that's my vision for these services. That's why I say I think they should be regarded as 'essential services' in every country. I mean we do that with police and

ambulance, every country has got police and an ambulance of some description because we say that's an essential service, you've gotta do that. You've gotta provide that. Every country should have a crisis support service available for people.

Tony: Yeah, I can feel the sort of fire in your belly about this. It's really encouraging and for me it maps back to something that we talked about earlier which is we're all one person can solve every problem in the world and can't even maybe buy themselves, solve any.

Alan: Yes.

Tony: But you see one in front of you that is important to the values that you have and to what you want for people and you are devoting yourself to it.

Alan: Yeah. I think I join thousands who simply see the value of this and again coming back to my own research to the great privilege I had of the 58 people who participated in my research. Now I'll be honest, not every one of those every time, had a good experience with the crisis line. So there was stuff to learn about how to make the crisis lines work really well. But most of them were able to say how the crisis line was such a valued support at the

time. I recall one of the people describing how they had phoned the crisis line when they were intensely suicidal and they said, "I just needed to have someone who would give me some hope." In other words, I had all these reasons to die. I was desperately looking for a reason to live, for somebody to suggest that and they described it and said, "All I needed was a skerrick of hope." Not everything in my life to be solved.

Not everything suddenly rosy. Not a savior to come in and rescue me. I just needed somebody who could genuinely show care for me and that would be enough for me to think I could go on to the next day. And they said the service gave me that. I looked at the experiences of those people in my research over more than 12 months.

Most of the people in my research I interviewed several times over 12 months and I asked them as part of those interviews is your life getting better or not? And not everybody's life got better, but some people's life got better and when I looked into that, some, a few, had their lives get better because their luck changed.

There was a remarkable cure to the chronic illness that they experienced and they had health again. They had a sudden money coming into them and they could secure their housing, things could turn around.

Tony: They couldn't possibly have guessed when they were in that earlier moment?

Alan: They didn't know that and for those few people whose life's dramatically turned around, they could say, "No I've not phoned the crisis line again, I haven't needed to." But most of the people in my group of 58 people were able to say, "Yes, my life has got a little better," and they could talk about how the crisis line had helped them make little improvements in their life towards gradual improvement.

And that's probably the reality for many people. Meanwhile, having access to a crisis support service that often met for people whose lives become messy and they're gradually trying as much as they can to improve their lives. When things get really tough they know that they've got a point of relief. So it doesn't all unwind, they don't feel completely unsupported, they can keep going and this is where we really need to put more value on

this concept of realising that people have got strengths within. Most people desire their lives to improve and will work at it and with support they often know what they need to do but they value enormously the support along the way, especially when things go awry.

Tony: If there are people who are listening, who are inspired by that, do we have enough crisis counselors?

Alan: In Australia we are pretty well off now. So it's with great, I guess satisfaction where I can say that Lifeline Australia, the national crisis line in this country achieves a greater than 90% call or contact answer rate across its services. The likelihood is when you call, you most likely get through quickly.

Tony: Yeah. I'm sure they're also always inviting more volunteers as well?

Alan: Can never have too many but my point there is Australia has built that.

Tony: Built that, right. It doesn't happen overnight.

Alan: Over the 25 years or so I've been involved in those services, I've seen that grow from a low base through to what it is now. So it does show what can occur and some of that frankly, is about investments. Either from government or from the community or from philanthropic and donations. And that's what's needed. It's not gonna just happen overnight but it can happen if there's good focus and there are investments.

Tony: Yeah. Thank you. So we've really covered a lot of ground here in terms of, I appreciate you sharing about your own personal growth, work in government, crisis services, so many different areas. I'm sure that people who are watching or listening and just want to, like I could sit here and learn from you all day. Across the things that we've talked about, across these many different ways that you have contributed over your career so far,

what are one or two lessons that you take or takeaways for you that, others might find helpful?

Alan: Okay. There are probably a couple of things, Tony.

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: That I would say I look back on. Coming more now towards the end of my career than the start and that point in life. I think it's really important to have purpose in life. That can be career based purpose but it can be other based, purpose. People can be an artist and not even necessarily receive payment for art, do art for art's sake. That's purposeful and it contributes to the world around us, it brings joy. It brings insight.

People might contribute in other ways. People contribute by nurturing their families and every family needs people who will nurture the family and that's purposeful. We need people who also can create things. We need business people. We need people who can be leaders in the community, all things but I think the way we are wired, is we need purpose. And the purpose can be all different and multifaceted and we shouldn't try and

predetermine or define what is good purpose and not so good purpose or anything. A person will find their purpose but I think it is important to have purpose and if we can encourage people to find their purpose and support them and respect them in that, that's really good.

Tony: For the listener who thinks maybe they don't know what their purpose is, what would you say?

Alan: I think the other thing I have learned,

Tony: okay, maybe this relates?

Alan: is actually to be your authentic self. Instead of necessarily pondering about," Oh, what is my purpose?"

Tony: Yeah.

Alan: Which tends to take you more into the intellectual side of that question and arguments about, "Well, I could do this", or "I could do that" or, "What about?" I think actually the answer comes through who am I? What do I like? Who do I like to be around? What are the things that I get energized or enthusiastic about? What am I good at? What things bring me satisfaction and joy and which people do I find and energise me and bring a sense of enjoyment?

Tony: And maybe building back on something you said earlier. Maybe one way to find your purpose just to think, to look at who you are. I also heard from you right at the beginning of our conversation that maybe another way is also to look around and see what's needed?

Alan: Yes.

Tony: And maybe I think it's also interesting that maybe the path isn't to just try to figure out what is my purpose in an abstract way but it's about, if I'm interpreting this right and tell me if I'm off but understand who I am, see what's needed around me and maybe don't spend too much time gazing out and wondering what my 'just' what my purpose is?

Alan: I think so. Maybe one way I'll express it, is this I guess is the third thing I've learned along the way.

Tony: Oh.

Alan: Is possibly influenced by the fact that my parents were both teachers is that being open to learning stuff is a really useful path. To always take enough interest to see what you can learn and you can learn a lot from other people. I've found that as I've tried to follow my fairly unplanned life of work and family, is that to look and see what I can learn because that is often what will guide you to where do you go and to always have enough sense

around yourself that you don't know at all. To be enough interested in learning because you might learn one more thing. My father was a remarkable person in his ability to relate to other people. He just loved meeting people and he had a talent for meeting all types of people. Whatever they did he could be talking to a homeless person out in the street and in half an hour's time, be talking with a political leader.

He taught kids from all different personalities and backgrounds and was able to find mostly a way through with them and he enjoyed people and I learned something from my father in that, that people are wonderful mostly and you can learn from them and if you're open to learning from those around you, your own life becomes enriched and you learn more about yourself.

But also the pursuit of learning to understand what you don't currently understand by being inquisitive and where there are problems that you don't see a way through, to try and unpack that and see what you can learn. And probably the risk of sounding cliched, to learn from your own mistakes and screw ups because we all do that. We make some really big ones sometimes but if you're able to learn from that, then you can go along as a

stronger and more capable person.

Tony: Consider who I am, what are my strengths. Look at what's around me and what's needed and find out what I need to learn.

Alan: And just be curious. I think being curious is a really good trait.

Tony: Definitely one that you have and I appreciate it. I appreciate you sharing what you have learned and are learning and I look forward to our continued friendship and hear what you will learn.

Alan: Thank you.

Tony: So thank you for having this conversation. It's been a real, honor.

Alan: Yeah, my pleasure.