By NIK ROLLS
Suicide Awareness
Newstalk ZB had a segment today on the New Zealand suicide rate, and if the government should be doing more to raise awareness to the situation. According to their statistics, suicide takes 520 New Zealanders per year (that’s 10 a week!) whereas the road toll is only 120. Millions of dollars are put into ad campaigns to lower the road toll, yet suicide still remains a subject that you just shouldn’t talk about. Their question was, ‘Should the veil be lifted from suicide and should the government create an anti-suicide campaign similar to those that currently exist for driving and depression?’
There were many calls in support of it, so as a graphics design exercise I have come up with a taste of what a national suicide awareness campaign may look like, in the form of road billboards.
- Encouraging families of depression suffers to look out for the signs that lead up to suicide.
- Helping the reader realise that suicidal tendencies are a medical condition and can be ‘cured’.
- ‘The world will be better without me’ is a common thought trait among people with suicidal tendencies. The phrasing of the above ad is meant to ring true to people who think or have heard it and then cause a double-take as they re-read it.
- ‘I have nothing to lose’ or ‘I have nothing in my life to live for’ are other common thought patterns. However it’s the families who suffer when someone commits the selfish act of suicide.
- The most difficult one to swallow compares suicide to murder and again raises the point of the families being the ones that are affected.
The billboards are designed to be simple and to the point, while at the same time making people feel slightly out of their comfort zone so they actually sit up and remember it. Suicide is hard enough to talk about as it is, but if we introduce reference to other difficult topics such as murder, HIV and the visual reference to overdosing and wrists it achieves the desired ‘short sharp shock’.
What are your thoughts on the situation? Should discussion about suicide remain taboo, or should it receive a nationwide campaign like the above? Do you think common discussion will make it more commonplace and therefore raise the rate, or do you think with careful execution we could do the same as the driving safety and anti-smoking campaigns and change the perception of suicide for the better? I appreciate your comments below.
