This Episode: Blue Monday – Suicide Prevention with Jessi Beyer
Lucinda welcomes suicide prevention expert, Jessi Beyer, to discuss the critical yet often overlooked topic of suicide prevention in the workplace.
Jessi shares her personal journey into this field, stemming from a life-changing experience in high school, and emphasises the importance of equipping non-mental health professionals, particularly HR practitioners, with the tools to recognise and respond to signs of distress among colleagues. The conversation also introduces the LIFE model—Listen, Inquire, Form a safety plan, and Eliminate lethal means—as a practical framework for supporting individuals in crisis.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The LIFE model consists of four key steps: Listen, Inquire, Form a safety plan, and Eliminate lethal means. This framework helps non-mental health professionals effectively support individuals in crisis.
- Dramatic changes in behaviour, appearance, and substance use can indicate someone is struggling. It’s important to be aware of these signs and to actively check in with colleagues who may be exhibiting such changes.
- Effective communication is crucial in supporting someone in distress. Key skills include reflection, minimal encouragers, mirroring, open-ended questions, summary statements, and the use of silence to create a safe space for sharing.
- In high-stress situations, such as someone threatening self-harm, the focus should be on slowing down the conversation, building rapport, and listening actively, while also ensuring that professional help is called.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s those people that are kind of those frontline supports, it’s friends, it’s family members, it’s colleagues that are going to be the people that recognise suicidal ideation first.”
“If you can do those four things, you will be able to handle and de-escalate the vast majority of suicidal or mental health crises that you might encounter in your workplace.”
“One of the biggest risk factors for suicide is feeling like you don’t have people around you.”
“If you can combine some of those statistics of like, it’s here and it’s costing us something, sometimes that’s enough to change the tides in an organisation that doesn’t think they need to care about mental health.”
Valuable Resources
The HR Uprising Podcast | Apple | Spotify | YouTube
The HR Uprising LinkedIn Group
Mastering Motivation with Rob Lion (The HR Uprising)
How To Be A Change Superhero – by Lucinda Carney
HR Uprising Mastermind – https://hruprising.com/mastermind/
If you liked this episode, try these
- Podcast Episode 264: Breaking the Silence: Addressing Mental Health Challenges in HR with Dr. Jo Burrell
- Podcast Episode 239: How to be Deeply Human with Kate Jones
Find out more about Actus solutions:
Appraisal Info-book: Rethinking Performance Appraisals
Performance Management Software
About The Guest, Jessi Beyer
Jessi Beyer, MHP, is an award-winning speaker, best-selling author, and crisis mental health professional specialising in suicide prevention and workplace safety. As a SWAT team negotiator and crisis co-responder, she brings real-world experience to her mission of helping organisations build crisis-ready teams through practical, evidence-based training. Jessi has spoken to thousands worldwide, authored How To Heal, and been featured in over 200 media outlets. Her work empowers leaders to create cultures of prevention – not reaction.
Connect with Jessi…
Website: https://jessibeyerinternational.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessierinbeyer/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjessibeyer/
About The Host
Lucinda Carney is a Business Psychologist with 15 years in Senior Corporate L&D roles. Lucinda, for over 10 years as CEO of Actus Software has worked closely with HR colleagues helping them to solve the same challenges across a huge range of industries. Certainly, it was this breadth of experience that inspired Lucinda to set up the HR Uprising community. In order to facilitate greater collaboration across HR professionals in different sectors, helping them to ‘rise up’ together.
“If you look up, you rise up”
How To Be A Change Superhero – by Lucinda Carney
Contact Method
- Join the HR Uprising LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13714397/
- Email: Lucinda@advancechange.co.uk
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucindacarney/
- X / Twitter: @lucindacarney
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