The first week of the Rain within the Rainbow project has flown by! I have been doing a lot of reading, some writing, and a ton of planning. I scheduled the first year of this project to be dedicated to mapping the landscape of LGBTQ+ suicide prevention across the UK. This part of the project was inspired by my previous work on suicide prevention policies, where frequently LGBTQ+ communities were identified as at ‘high risk of’ suicide [1]. To respond to this, policies would suggest that LGBTQ+ people might benefit from tailored or prioritised suicide prevention, but what those practices might look like or who might provide them was often left out of the policy documents, leaving this rather ambiguous. This can mean that although there is good will within services who want to make positive changes, it can be hard for them to know where to start!
Despite this, we know that there are some excellent practices that exist, which we can learn from. So in this first phase of the Rain within the Rainbow, I will map the landscape of services doing this work across the public, private, Third and community/peer support sectors, developping an overview of the types of services they provide, to identify examples of good practice that could be shared with services who are hoping to develop their practice in this area, but have found it difficult to know where to start.
To do this I will be doing lots of desk-based research (also known as googling), and sharing what I find along the way both here on the project’s website and through public events that I will organise when I have sufficient information to share. Sharing these findings will enable orgnaisations who want to learn to connect with services who already have established practices in this area, as well as connecting the project with people who work for, volunteer with, or have used excellent services who will be able to sense check the findings and where needed make suggestions of organsations, services or groups that I have missed. This said, I will welcome suggestions at any point in the project, so if you have an organisation that you think I should include, or if you would just like to be kept up to date with the project’s news, please email me: hazel.marzetti@ed.ac.uk.
Alongside this mapping exercise, I am also setting up the project infastructure in the background with things like an ethics application and sorting out a lot of admin. An important part of this is planning how I will communicate the project’s aims and findings, beyond this website. This is something that is always quite challenging, because it’s hard to know who you’re missing, particularly when you’re not sure where they might be! All suggestions for communication channels are very welcome. However, perhaps the most important part of this setting up is organising the arrangements for our panel of experts by experience who will help to guide the project. This panel will be essential for ensuring that the research is useful to people with lived experience of suicidal distress and suicide bereavement, so I’m looking forward to beginning recruiting members and working together!
