Suicide Prevention Australia

In 2004 Debbie Knight lost a close friend to suicide. Her loss was just one case in a community which was becoming all too familiar with an issue being labelled as epidemic in the Mackay Region. As often happens, she and a group of friends got together with a view to raising awareness around suicide prevention. They did some fundraising and created the beginnings of a powerful and highly regarded organisation, Grapevine Group Mackay. Debbie has been with this group from the very beginning and in the past 13 years Grapevine has become a foundation stone which underpins the entire mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention movement in the Mackay region. The group's focus - and that which Debbie has campaigned strongly and consistently for - is education. In partnership with local community suicide awareness and fundraising body Run For Mi Life, as well as LifeLine and the nationally renowned Living Works, Grapevine brought to Mackay the highly regarded safeTALK and ASIST programs in 2014. In conjunction w