Storytellers in suicide prevention have the power to shift culture and change the world in ways other stakeholders are not able to do. Our “voices of insight” have influence and shape others’ understanding on a deep level. People with lived experience seek to stand in solidarity with our research colleagues, policy champions and mental health professionals to embed our deep wisdom in a processes of partnership. In this podcast, I speak with the world renowned Bronwen Edwards, a global authority on the power of lived experience to drive large scale change in suicide prevention. We talk about how we can approach our partners — who may have different values, priorities and points of view — with “compassionate curiosity” so we can “collaborate the big collaboration” (instead of “fight the good fight”).

About Bronwen Edwards
Bronwen is the CEO of Roses in the Ocean, a national lived experience of suicide organisation that has spent the last decade building the capacity of people with lived experience to utilise their voice and insights to inform, influence and enhance suicide prevention, and the capacity of communities, organisations and government to meaningfully engage with them.

Having advocated for non-clinical alternatives to traditional services for many years, Bronwen and Roses in the Ocean also work with communities to co-design new service models including safe spaces, develop and support the critical suicide prevention peer workforce, and continue to drive and support the implementation of system reform.

Bronwen holds a variety of state and national advisory positions, to which she first and foremost brings her personal lived experience of suicide to the table, while also striving to honour the vast perspectives of others she has been privileged to work with and walk alongside over many years.

Bronwen is the Co-Chair of the International Association of Suicide Prevention Special Interest Group: Lived Experience.