Safety planning: what’s the evidence?

There is a lot of evidence that supports the effectiveness of safety planning. 

The bottom line is, safety planning can be life-saving. So, if you know how to do safety planning, you can essentially save someone’s life (or your own). I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty freaking empowering!

So, what is safety planning and what can it look like?

Safety planning, as the name suggests, is the efforts taken to create a written plan outlining steps to take that keep a suicidal person safe. This can be done alone by the person who is at risk, or together with a trusted friend, family member or mental health professional. 

Everyone’s safety plan looks different, as it is entirely centered around that person and everything that makes them unique.

There are five key elements of a safety plan that all plans should include:

• The person’s warning signs that they’re heading into a dark place.

• The actions the person can take to keep their space safe (this may involve removing means to end their life or entrusting other people to look after items that could be used to cause harm).

• The person’s reasons to live

• Things they can do to distract themselves from thoughts of suicide when they arise - this could be alone, or with other people.

• The contact details of supports they can access (mixture of personal and professional supports).

My favourite safety planning tool is Beyond Blue’s app Beyond Now. What I love about this app (there’s also a web version) is that it’s super easy to use and accessible for anyone and everyone, regardless of how much mental health training you’ve had. 

Here’s a video that further explains safety planning and how Beyond Now works.

Having feelings of suicide can be really scary, and while you or the person you’re supporting may be creating some kind of plan to end their life, safety planning is a way to make a plan to keep them alive. Often, creating a safety plan is actually quite an empowering experience for the individual experiencing suicidal ideation.

Click here to watch one person’s experience with safety planning. 

Please note that although Beyond Now can be downloaded from anywhere in the world, the emergency contact numbers that you can call directly from the app are Australia-specific (Emergency services, Suicide call back service, and lifeline). 

No need to stress, you can still input local contact numbers manually!

We know that suicide is one of the leading causes of death of Australians aged 15-44, so if there’s a way to reduce the intensity of suicidal thoughts and increase people’s ability to cope with them - I’d say that’s pretty worthwhile!