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NUNAVUT - A new suicide prevention strategy coupled with an intervention training program for Nunavut's front-line workers will be introduced in the territory over the next year.

Marie-Lucie Uviluq, a resource and health support worker for the Embrace Life Council in Cambridge Bay, was one of the first group of participants to go through the training program.

Premier Eva Aariak says the new suicide alertness and intervention training program will help front-line workers feel more confident in their ability to help someone they know is at risk. - Carolyn Sloan/NNSL photo

Having also been personally touched by suicide, Uviluq said the workshop had helped her better understand her own emotions.

"It helped me realize that I was not a failure. I was not a failure when that person committed suicide," she said. "I thought I was. But having taken this course, I now realize I was not at fault.

"Had I know about this, about the procedure, the process of it, perhaps I would have been able to help more, but that is all water under the bridge."

Last Thursday, she was full of praise for the program and hope for the future.

"There was a lot of information that I knew was there, but didn't know how to get across, but with the course that they were teaching us, it's so simple," she said. "(There's) a little booklet that we can use and follow whenever there's a person at risk involved."

Over the past decade, there have been 271 suicides by Inuit in Nunavut, which currently has an average of 27 suicides per year. Within that period, 70 per cent of suicides were by were men under the age of 25. The suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-old Inuit men is 28 times the Canadian rate among the same age group.

The new prevention strategy and intervention training program are the product of a partnership that formed in 2008 between the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Embrace Life Council with aim of developing a more collaborative and inclusive approach to suicide prevention in the territory.

The partnership's new plan will replace the government's own suicide intervention and prevention strategy, Annirusuktugut, launched in June 2007, which was specific to its various departments.

"We wanted to just have one strategy that all of the different organizations could work from and try to achieve one objective," said Natan Obed, director of social and cultural development for Nunavut Tunngavik. "One of the things that we're focused on immediately is giving front-line workers and community members the tools in order to intervene with people who are at risk."

The suicide alertness and intervention training program, Uqaqatigiiluk!/Talk about It!, is an adaptation of best-practice Applied Suicide Intervention Skill Training developed by Calgary-based LivingWorks Education.

As the new suicide prevention strategy is developed over the next year, the two-day training program will be delivered in 11 Nunavut communities and at professional development conferences for front-line government workers.

In working towards adapting the program, the partnership invited more than 20 people from across Nunavut to take part in the training last week in Iqaluit.

"Uqaqatigiiluk! ... will be adapted by those people in this room, Nunavummiut who work as social workers, educators, health professionals, RCMP officers and community youth leaders," said premier Eva Aariak following the program.

While it may be a painful experience, talking about suicide is key to being able to help those at risk, said Obed.

"Some people would rather we talk just about celebrating life or embracing life or life promotion and we feel that positive spin is a core component of suicide prevention," he said.

"But it can't replace the term because suicide prevention also includes providing services for people with mental illnesses...or people who have gone through extreme trauma who need those services in order to live healthy lives.

"We have to talk about suicide in order to have a complete picture, in order to provide the services and programs necessary to help people at risk."