Lifeline Australia’s position is that research and research translation are fundamental levers for realising the vision of an Australia free of suicide. The Lifeline Research Office partners with leading Australian and international research groups to grow the crisis support and suicide prevention evidence base to ensure Lifeline’s services and advice are informed by evidence of the highest quality.
The Building a Lifeline for the future: Expectations, innovations, outcomes project is a five-year National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is a partnership project between Lifeline Australia and a number of world leading researchers in the suicide prevention space. The project aims to enhance the evidence base for crisis support services and Lifeline in particular.
Eclipse is an 8-week psychoeducational support group adapted from the Didi Hirsch Survivors Of Suicide Attempt (SOSA) group. Between 2016 and 2022, an evaluation of Eclipse found that participation in Eclipse was associated with significant reductions in suicide attempts, as well as increases in resilience and well-being among participants.
The preventing suicide among boys and men project is a part of a five-year Million Minds Research Fund (MMRF) project between the Centre of Mental Health, University of Melbourne (Lead Investigator Professor Jane Pirkis), Orygen, and Lifeline Australia. This project aims to create, implement and evaluate a professional development module for Lifeline to further upskill Crisis Supporters in engaging with and responding to male callers within Lifeline’s care framework using a randomised controlled trial.
Since 2010, the Lifeline Research Office has partnered with the Ageing Futures Institute of UNSW to inform advocacy around suicide and older people, and to enhance the evidence base around Crisis Supporter awareness of elder suicide as well as dementia and dementia-related issues.
The Lifeline Research Office partnered with La Trobe University with the support of ACON and QLife to increase understanding of needs, motivators, and barriers that currently affect LGBTI+ peoples’ uptake of crisis support services. This is the first research of its kind in Australia that explores the needs of LGBTI+ people during a time of personal or mental health crises.
Lifeline Australia has partnered with Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health and the Victorian Department of Education and Training in an NHMRC funded project to evaluate the effectiveness of an integrated response to suicide risk among secondary schools using a regionally-based randomised trial.
The LLEAG consists of people who have experience of having thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts, experiencing crisis, and/or being a carer of a person in crisis, and provide expert knowledge and advise to ground Lifeline in what is important.