Category: suicide

Brodie Panlock – the catalyst for new bullying/stalking laws

“Brodie’s Law” is gaining considerable attention in the Victorian newspapers in anticipation of the introduction of the Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Bill 2011 in Parliament but it may be unreasonable to label these changes “Brodie’s Law” as, although Brodie Panlock’s suicide and the related court actions were the catalyst for the Bill, the proposed Bill is much broader than workplace bullying and, in many ways, focuses more on stalking than bullying, if there can be a differentiation.

The draft bill will broaden the existing offence of stalking in the Crimes Act to capture types of bullying behaviour and are likely to expand the types of  environments in which such bullying can occur. Continue reading “Brodie Panlock – the catalyst for new bullying/stalking laws”

Suicide research and cultural change

I often have my “western” assumptions punctured by evidence from the non-western or majority world.  Recently SafetyAtWorkBlog has reported on workplace suicide statistics but a report made available through the World Health Organisation says

“Low-income countries in Asia and the Pacific have the highest burden of suicide in the world.   These countries are among the poorest globally, and face many social and political challenges.”

This report reminds me that although the westerners may claim to be short of resources, most countries have much less yet  are still morally obliged to provide social support.  It also speaks about cultural change and the application of new strategies. Continue reading “Suicide research and cultural change”

Australian suicide research expands understanding of workplace factors

Research is intended to provide answers but sometimes it can only provide clues. But clues allow progress and flag peripheral issues that could possibly become mainstream.  Social research into the possible workplace influences on suicide is one area of clues and, again, the Creative Ministries Network (CMN) has undertaken solid research into the worst-case scenario of workplace mental health advocates.

Recently CMN released “Suicide and Work“, it’s March 2010 research report. The accompanying media release said:

“Of eleven suicides where the deceased person had at least one prior WorkCover claim prior to their death, the length of time on workers’ compensation was positively correlated with increased probability of suicide. The data is not able to indicate what it is about the length of time on compensation that may be critical to whether an injured worker commits suicide. Continue reading “Australian suicide research expands understanding of workplace factors”

Death at work and work-related death

People die every day.  Some die in their sleep in bed, some collapse in the street, some suicide at a place of their choosing, others die at work.  But for those who die at work there is an important differentiation between dying at work and dying from work.

The differentiation can be fairly simple to determine but can be muddied by workplace politics.  For instance, the South Australian desalination project (video report available) has had one work-related fatality but there have been at least three deaths on-site.  Determining what is work-related is important for safety managers as this affects the way an incident is investigated, the resources allocated to the investigation and the level of emphasis placed on prevention. Continue reading “Death at work and work-related death”

WorkCover and Suicides

In response to a recent post about Workplace Suicides, Rosemary McKenzie-Ferguson provided a lengthy comment that I believe deserves a post of its own:

The hardest funeral to say “a few words” at is the funeral of a suicide victim.

The hardest thing to do is look into the hearts of the family and friends of the person in the coffin and try to find a glimmer of hope to gift them to hold onto.

The hardest thing to cope with is knowing that the loved one in the coffin held onto life with both hands until the harshness of life within the WorkCover system became too much to cope with. Continue reading “WorkCover and Suicides”

Death at work differs from work-related death

Often immediately following an incident, the safety manager receives a brief phone call “There’s been an accident.” Information is scarce and, in my experience, often wrong or more fairly inadequate. in OHS there will always be an assumption that an injury or death is work-related as that is our patch but people die every day and they can die anywhere, even in your workplace. Is this a workplace incident? Yes. Is it an occupational incident? not necessarily.

It is vital in those first moments of confusion and panic, not to jump to conclusions and rush out to the incident site. If it is your responsibility you will become involved but often, by asking a few simple questions, you are able to avoid this confusion and avoid worsening the situation by “butting in” where you are not needed.

I was reminded of this when reading about a coronial inquest into two suicides that occurred at an Australian shooting range in October 2008. These two incidents occurred at a workplace but not from work-related activities. There may have been some workplace management issues that, in hindsight, relate to supervision or security but these are the type of issues that the Coroner will investigate.

The deaths are reportable to the OHS regulators as they occurred on a workplace but it is unlikely that the regulator will put a lot of resources into the investigation given the Police and Coroner are investigating.

New suicide report has something to say about workplace mental health

Work-related suicides have been in the press a lot in Australia over the last six months.  In June 2010, the Australian Government released a report into suicide called The Hidden Toll: Suicide in Australia.  It covers suicide as a social issue broadly but there are some mentions in the report about work-related suicides that are worth noting.

On social costs:

“Ms Dulcie Bird of the Dr Edward Koch Foundation argued that whole communities are often affected when a suicide occurs and described low estimates of the number of people effected by suicide as ‘a load of nonsense’. She gave the example of the suicide of a 16-year-old boy in a small town and noted her organisation had completed ’43 face-to-face interventions for that one suicide’. The Foundation commented that suicide results in the loss of the deceased person’s contribution to society as a whole. Continue reading “New suicide report has something to say about workplace mental health”

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