Emily tells her story

Emily, who lost her partner to suicide, and who now facilitates our Barrow area peer support group, has been working with Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust to tell her story. This is the Trust responsible for mental health services in the south of Cumbria and Emily wanted to share her story to help those working in the Trust, and others, have insight into the trauma and wide-ranging consequences of bereavement by suicide, through her personal perspective.

The initial image for Emily’s video as it appears on the NHS Trust website.

 “I approached them as I wanted to find a way of making them more aware of SBS Cumbria and the support available to others in a similar position to my own,” says Emily. “I worked with Lesley Whittaker, whose job title is Senior Enhancing Experience Matron – a bit of a mouthful to describe an experienced nurse, one who listened with great patience, was very supportive, and really took time to understand what I wanted to share.”

The result is a video in the Trust’s My Story strand that is now on its website and on YouTube. You can watch it here.

“We reached an agreement before starting, (based on the blog below about sharing your experiences) as I was very aware that my wellbeing had to be the absolute top priority,” says Emily. “It was certainly a difficult thing to do. I wrote an initial ‘script’ and the video was then created with images that reinforced the words. Since it has been online, it’s been suggested it was a brave thing to do – if I’m brave, it’s only when I’ve done everything I can to protect myself! Part of the agreement was that I could pull out at any time and that I could control the final version and how it would be used. The family all had a look at it before it was finalised, and I took on board various suggestions from them – it’s amazing how important one word or line or image feels to us. It’s obviously extremely emotive and we needed to take time and get it ‘right’.”

Emily invested a lot of her time and emotions into the content of the video and was keen that it be used with staff members to give them a better insight and understanding. “I’ve already heard that, just in the first month it was available, the video has been used on a development day with 16 members of staff. Apparently, it really got them thinking about the wider impact of a suicide on family and those left behind and was quite an emotional session – I hope that it will continue to be worthwhile and useful for years to come.”

You can hear Emily’s story here and there are other stories from the Trust’s patients on a shared page here.