Recommendations made by new NT youth suicide report

The Select Committee on Youth Suicides in the NT has tabled its report Gone too soon: a report into youth suicide in the Northern Territory.

The report finds that young people in the Northern Territory are three and a half times more likely to commit suicide than young people nationally. It also finds that Indigenous deaths account for 75% of all child suicides in the Northern Territory between 2007 and 2011.

The report identifies four areas of further action and makes 23 recommendations, including that:

• headspace centres be established at Katherine, Tennant Creek and Nhulunbuy
• a Litchfield Activity Hub be constructed as a ‘one-stop’ youth wellbeing facility in outer Darwin
• a high-level Suicide Prevention Coordination Committee be established
• comprehensive mapping of youth and community services be undertaken
• the Department of Education review school bullying and cyber-bullying policies
• the Coroner’s Office be resourced to provide grief counselling services and to maintain a Suicide Register.

The federal government has backed the recommendations made in the report.

Source: Select Committee on Youth Suicides in the Northern Territory; Sydney Morning Herald

• Further information:
  Committee – Tabling of report on youth suicides
• View media release: Northern Territory Government
  Government pledges to act on Aboriginal youth suicide
• View media release: Sydney Morning Herald (28 March 2012)
• View website: Select Committee on Youth Suicide in the Northern Territory
• View website: Sydney Morning Herald