Speaking of Suicide

"It's absolutely true that bereavement by suicide is completely different from any other kind of bereavement. And don't think you ever get over it." Key takeaways from this podcast Don't assume that just because a family member may have been ill for some time, the grief and sense of loss is any less. It's not. Talking about grief and loss for some people is very hard and crippling. Find a way to g...

"I pulled into lay by, and I cried my heart out. I howled, I pleaded, I looked at the sky, looked at everything, and I was like, please help me. I need some help" Key takeaways from this podcast It is possible to recover from trauma. When someone is struggling with their mental health don't ask "what's wrong with you?" Instead ask "What happened to you?" There is no one way to find healing for you...

"He'd come into the kitchen, obviously, to eat his lunch, and something in his head thought, nah, like, just do it now" Key takeaways from this podcast There are some risk factors that can lead to suicidal thoughts which can be identified Suicide is nobody's fault, there is no blame linked to suicide. There isn’t a day that goes by that Georgia doesn’t think about her brother Callum and his profou...

"When I was a teenager I just felt I couldn't carry this pain any longer, it was just too much" Key takeaways from this podcast There is huge value in just pausing and taking a little while longer before taking any actions. If you stop and pause then hopefully you will find other routes out of your pain. Every 2 hours a man in the UK takes his own life. Inspired by that appalling statistic, f...

“I got home and that’s when the sort of night terrors and the day terrors started. I was overwhelmed by fear for the baby’s health, I assumed I would be the person that would cause her pain and suffering and therefore it would have been better for me to be elsewhere” Key takeaways from this podcast We need to normalise the conversation about post-natal depression without stigma or judgement. Post-...

Episode take-away: Find out what the specific thing is which helps you deal with losing someone you love and if you come from a world where silence is the norm, find a way to break it. It’s coming up for 10 years since Catherine Simpson’s sister, Tricia, took her own life.  In the aftermath of Tricia’s death Catherine – who’s a journalist and writer – went on a quest, picking through Tricia’s...

Episode takeaways: support makes all the difference and breaking the shame cycle means change can happen. Struggling with an eating disorder significantly increases your risk of suicide so don't struggle on your own. Gemma's takeaway is “please don’t give up on yourself, seek support, reach out…it is possible to have a life after an eating disorder” Gemma was very young when she started to struggl...

Episode takeaway: Everyone is different. Xani found cycling as his way forward but yours might be writing or journaling or walking or something else, work with whatever helps you to make sense of the grief of suicide. Xani had planned that it would be his sister Alice helping him cycle his tandem but after she took her own life at the start of 2022 he decided to turn the back seat of his tandem in...

Episode take-away: how to build resilience in the face of bullying through drawing on your support network, asking for help, growing your confidence and your sense of perspective. “He was the smiley one that everyone would go to for a laugh” 16 year old Neve lost a good friend to suicide when he was just 13, now, in a bid to inspire other teens to feel more able to share when they’re struggling an...

Episode take-away: The value of finding a vehicle to process our grief journey through suicide and why writing might be a good way to process pain. Heartbreakingly honest and deeply thought provoking.  Only a few weeks after Victoria lost her younger brother Sean to suicide she asked to share her experience of loss with us.  Victoria felt really strongly that hearing about the early stag...

Episode take-away: The value of honesty and how to break the cycle of shame, isolation and helplessness that comes with addiction. “We need to change how we view addiction so that people from all walks of life feel able to emerge from the shadows and seek help”.  Open, brave, honest and seriously inspiring, in this episode Rachel Smart, a journalist and recovering addict, who’s battled with d...

In June 2022 John Gibson started walking the length of Great Britain, 1200 miles from Land’s End to John O' Groats, with the aim of starting a national conversation around suicide.   His walk was in response to the moment in 2019, when John’s son, Cameron, took his life without warning. Left reeling and feeling utterly helpless in the aftermath of this devastating event John found walkin...

In this episode of Speaking of Suicide Dan joins Kev Stacey from Inverness’s 42 Cycling to explore the benefits of the wide-open environment on our mental health. Former Black Watch soldier, Kev takes Dan on a #RespiteRide and along the way talks about his experience of being injured in Iraq by an IED. The aftermath of the attack led Kev to struggling with his mental health and a gambling addictio...

Mike McCathy’s son wrote him a farewell letter. Ross asked his dad to campaign for better mental health support for people like him, people in need. That was all Mike needed to pick up the baton and devote himself to developing one of the biggest suicide awareness and prevention initiatives the UK has ever seen - The Baton of Hope. Dan Holland talks to Mike about Ross and the aim of The Baton of H...

Imagine you are a cancer doctor who starts to worry that you too have cancer but that worry then grows and grows into an all-consuming obsession. Every day, day after day you go into work where you are having to diagnose and treat people with cancer, which all the while feeds your own horror that you might have it too.  Sounds like a version of hell but that’s just what happened to Russell who Pen...

International Shinty legend, BBC Radio Scotland presenter and acclaimed musician Gary Innes was 16 years old when one of his friends took their own life. At school it wasn’t talked about, it was moved silently to the side. Over the next 20 years a further 5 of his Lochaber Shinty Club teammates would do the same thing. This horror shook not just the world of shinty, but the whole of Lochaber. It l...

At 18, Sandy Clunas left Nairn in the north of Scotland and headed off to Australia to become a windsurfing instructor.  In the following 10 years he travelled the world competing and teaching windsurfing, on the surface of it he was living the dream until it all came crashing down and he found himself in a very dark and difficult place, contemplating suicide.  In this honest, open and engaging co...

Pennie talks to Dylan Cathcart about how he managed to transform his life and ability to be open about his ups and downs after he decided to take the brave step of talking to a therapist.  In Dylan’s words therapy has been ‘a tornado of an experience’ but he’s really passionate about how it’s helped him, and it’s fuelled his hope that he can help others too.  As well as being open and honest about...

In this episode Pennie talks to her oldest friend, Bastie Morrison.  Although they’ve known each other their whole lives, they’ve never discussed the fact that Bastie’s mum Jill took her own life when he was only 5 years’ old.   Bastie wasn’t ever directly told about his mum’s suicide – something he feels was seriously misjudged at the time – and it was only through piecing together what little he...

What would you say right now to someone, a friend, a family member if they came to you and said they felt that life wasn’t worth living? It’s tough isn’t it. Even harder if you’re not expecting it. For this episode of Speaking of Suicide, Dan Holland is in Edinburgh to meet and go for a walk with Christo Hudson. Christo is a former commercial pilot.  When the pandemic took grip on our world and lo...

A real story of hope this episode as Pennie Stuart and Matt Wallace, founder of Clarity Walk , take a walk and talk through Reelig Glen.  Matt talks about how a move to Glasgow left him isolated and increasingly depressed, so much so he became suicidal.  His mental health started to impact on his physical health, and he became locked in a circle of misery.  Thankfully Matt realised in time that he...

Cromarty is s a small tight knit, highland community where everyone knows everyone else. Katie Mackay and her elder brother Calum grew up there , Calum was always seen with a beaming smile around the village, he’d speak to anyone, he was proud and protective of his wee sister. But Calum was hard on himself, judging himself against others. His death came as a complete shock to Katie and her family....

This episode is a bit different because it takes the form of a conversation between Shona Macpherson and Professor Rory O’Connor.  Shona is a counsellor and life coach who works with Mikeysline and will be a familiar voice to you if you listen to the podcast regularly.  Rory is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of suicide prevention, he’s Professor of Health Psychology, Director of t...

Each day across the 12 Days of Christmas Counsellor Shona Macpherson is joining Pennie Stuart, in collaboration with Mikeysline, to share some mental health skills, practical tips you can try which might just help when you’re finding life a struggle.  Today Shona encourages us to stand back and observe ourselves with more distance, watching our thoughts and emotions coming and going while learning...

Each day across the 12 Days of Christmas Counsellor Shona Macpherson is joining Pennie Stuart, in collaboration with Mikeysline, to share some mental health skills, practical tips you can try which might just help when you’re finding life a struggle.  Shona talks us through an intriguing idea of standing in the future so we can look back at ourselves and how we solve today’s problems and struggles...