Centre for Suicide Prevention

Educating for Life

Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP) has been involved in Living Hope since the very beginning, offering their expertise and guidance to the Edmonton Suicide Prevention Advisory Committee. We are now lucky to have the CSP as a member on our Steering Committee and Leadership Team. CSP is a provincial education centre, a centre of excellence based in Calgary. For nearly 40 years, CSP has been equipping Canadians with the information, knowledge and skills necessary to respond to people at risk of suicide. 

“Centre for Suicide Prevention is proud to be involved with the Living Hope suicide prevention plan. Prevention plans are important at every governmental level and Edmonton is the first large municipality in Alberta to create and implement a suicide prevention plan,” said Mara Grunau, executive director of the Centre for Suicide Prevention. “We commend the work of the City of Edmonton in taking this initiative. By having open, thoughtful dialogue together with raising awareness and providing skills-training, Edmontonians are becoming equipped to respond to each other; to people who are thinking about suicide. Together they are creating a community where people take care of one another, to help people get the help they need.”

CSP are subject-matter experts in suicide and suicide prevention. They work with many government, non-profit, and corporate organizations to co-develop policies, strategies, and guidelines.

Education is a best practice in suicide prevention, research indicates that anyone can be the person who helps someone at-risk of suicide. To this end, CSP educates online, in print, and interactively. Their library of over 45,000 suicide-specific items is the largest English-language collection of its kind and informs the work they do.

Part of their education components includes workshops in suicide prevention; each year they train thousands of people from hundreds of agencies across Alberta. They also provide free, online resources that provide information about suicide and how it can be prevented.

For more information on the Centre for Suicide Prevention visit https://www.suicideinfo.ca/.