To help prevent suicide, they created a song that gives hope : NPR

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide or in crisis, call or text. 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

When Jo Lambert first learned that one of her loved ones was planning to commit suicide, she felt horror.

“I was so panicked about the grief I might feel if my loved one died that it prevented me from giving my loved one what I needed. [to]” says Lambert, 54, who lives in London.

This was back in 2017. Over time, through trial and error, Lambert says, she realized she needed to put her feelings aside and focus on the person in front of her. “Once I detached myself from the outcome, I became fully aware of the person in crisis. That's when I realized it.”

From poem to film

As Lambert matured in her role as a caregiver for someone who was actively suicidal, she made a “promise to the universe” that she would teach others what she had learned “so that people would not be powerless while watching a loved one suffer.”

This opportunity came in 2023 when she teamed up with five other people. All of them have experienced suicide. One of them was mourning a suicide; others struggled with suicidal thoughts themselves. They took their collective experience and made short film on suicide prevention, commissioned suicide prevention program in the UK

They used a poem written by Lambert called “Keep hope“ narrate the film and gave the film the same title. “Will you keep hope for me? I feel like I've lost my way. I need you to be strong for me. And help me find the strength to stay,” Lambert says, reading a poem during our Zoom call.

Line after line, the poem asks for emotional safety in the face of intense despair and suicidal feelings.

Can you be strong enough
Stay by my side long enough
Will you keep trying until you've done enough
So I give up what I had planned

Hold this place for me
Accept my torment, stay close
Hide your discomfort
When I mention suicidal thoughts

Save this place for me
Hold my gaze, don't look away
Meet my broken head
Don't jump back in alarm
Stay focused, steady, calm

It requires the person in a supportive role to “connect, reflect and validate” the feelings of the person in crisis. This reminds people that people in suicidal crisis are often brought to this point by past experiences, perhaps related to trauma and hardship, and that they need someone else to remind them of their own resilience.

“These [are] the voices of those who regularly return to active suicide and survive because of the compassion of others,” says Lambert. Her poem explains to people what that compassion can look like. “It's in a form that's easy to remember, and it tells people, 'This is what someone who's been there and survived needs.'

The filmmakers show some of these people in different settings: at a train station, in a room, or sitting on a park bench. Their silent faces and the words of a poem read by a British spoken word artist. George the Poet — describe the intense isolation and despair experienced by people in suicidal crisis, as well as their need for connection and emotional support from others. And the film reminds people that the right support can give them hope for the future.

A way to combat stigma

Lambert now works for a regional NHS mental health trust, coordinating suicide prevention training sessions for health workers, first responders, schools, volunteers and agencies. In 2024 South West London and St George's NHS Foundation Trusta leading provider of mental health services in south west London, has begun using the film as part of its suicide prevention training.

Lambert and her boss Justine Trippier, a psychiatric nurse, often conduct these trainings together. And they show the film to the audience.

Trippier, who has worked with people with lived experience of mental illness, says sharing these voices can help combat the stigma around suicide: “I believe that if we hear from people directly, it can change attitudes and make people compassionate.”

She said using the film during teaching made the classes more fun. “We see a change in compassion, a change in the level of reflection, a change in how people are awake.”

And the raw emotion expressed in the film and Lambert's poem makes visitors more open to sharing their own experiences, she adds. Sometimes a participant with his loved one becomes suicidal. In other cases, it is a healthcare professional trying to cope with the loss of a patient to suicide.

Suicide prevention as “everyone’s business”

This year, Lambert, who says she's always heard the poem as a song, worked with composer Joe Weymouth to bring the song to life. “This song grounded me and helped me get through my loved one’s crises,” she explains.

She recruited a group of volunteer singers – students, health workers from the NHS Mental Health Trust in south-west London, including Trippier, and some with lived experience of suicide – and recorded the song in church.

Lambert and Trippier now want to use the song to spread their message of suicide prevention to more people.

Lambert notes that the NHS Mental Health Trust's suicide prevention strategy states: “We must make suicide prevention and awareness raising everyone's business. Now the key question is: how?”

Her own experience brought her to art. “The reason we do this in art is because we bring it into the mainstream,” she says. And she wants to use the song to reach different audiences. She worked with a dancer to create a free dance to a song they wrote. published on YouTube. And Lambert also wants to release a hip-hop version soon.

Lambert adds that her film and song alone are not enough to teach people how to support a loved one in crisis. “It needs to be made clear that this is not a substitute for statutory training,” says Lambert, referring to the more formal training that Trippier and others provide. “We're just saying that this is what helped a group of people who survived. That's what mattered. And we’re just offering this in addition to what already exists.”

As she knows well from her own experience, the work of caring for someone with suicidal tendencies can be exhausting.

“It's not a quick conversation when everything is fine now,” she says. “In my life experience, sometimes it took 16 hours without a break. And then I knew that the moment had passed – my loved one was now safe.”

But for some, these crises can last for days, months or years, she says, and for some people, periods of suicidal crises may alternate.

According to Lambert, when exhaustion hit her, she imagined that her loved one had accidentally fallen off a cliff.

“I used to imagine that I would have to keep pulling, pulling, pulling until they could get up on their own,” Lambert says. “And I used to say, 'I'll rely on you until you can't do it.'

Familiar Topics

The song's lessons are similar to those that suicide prevention experts in the United States give to health care workers and others caring for suicidal people.

“Our advice, first and foremost, when you are sitting with someone who is struggling with suicidal thoughts, is not to panic,” says psychologist Ursula Whiteside, who runs Now is important nowa nonprofit organization dedicated to suicide prevention in Washington State.

“Secondly, to be present with that person,” Whiteside explains, “to be in the same room with them as much as possible.”

Whiteside says Lambert's song is unlike anything she's seen or heard in the suicide prevention field. She adds that the fact that the song is sung by a church choir elevates the theme.

“It almost seems to show a kind of acknowledgment and respect for people's experiences of what is such a painful decision and such an important decision—it feels very powerful.”

Whiteside said she was touched by the song both as a health care worker and as someone who has struggled with suicidal thoughts.

“What's really impressive about this is that people are saying things that might be helpful” to someone in crisis, she says. “Like, 'This is what I want you to do.' And for so long this side of things was not taken into account, not considered, not questioned.”

The Value of Live Experience

Health care providers and suicide prevention experts are increasingly recognizing the importance of listening to the voices of people who have experienced suicide. Research shows that highlighting the experiences of suicide survivors seeking help can go a long way in preventing others from attempting suicide.

“When I listened to this [song]“I kept coming back to the fact that people very often survive,” Whiteside says. 988 Notes on Suicide and Crisis Helpline according to his website, for every person who dies by suicide, more than 300 people seriously consider suicide but do not end their lives.

Whiteside said Lambert's song is a good reminder that, with the right help, people can and do choose life despite feeling suicidal.