Bury First Suicide Prevention Conference

Bury’s first Suicide Prevention Conference on June 18th 2025, titled "We're In This Together" brought together mental health professionals, community leaders, employers, advocates, and individuals affected by suicide to work together towards saving lives. This conference focused on raising awareness, providing resources, and developing strategies to prevent suicide in our communities and workplaces. Organised by Rebecca Jackson from the Big Fandango, Lorna Wilson and Tom Wild from The Creative Living Centre with support from Jim McGlynn from Bury Public Health 

Speakers covered a variety of topics including changing the narrative around suicide prevention and care, risk within the neurodiverse community and the importance of community within mental health support.

Speakers included:
Rebecca Jackson - CEO The Big Fandango , a suicide prevention organisation in Bury offering suicide prevention training , peer support for families bereaved by suicide and a sewing studio space to learn new skills, build confidence and prevent loneliness and isolation

Paul Vittles - Designer & facilitator of The Zero Suicide Society Join The Dots Transformation Programme and directly involved in the development of a British Standard for Suicide Prevention.

Russ Magnall - Facilitator and trainer in workplace mental wellbeing, founder of Safe and Sound, veteran police commander and coach.

Julia Waters - sister of Ruth Perry, Head teacher who took her own life following an OFSTED inspection, Julia has been campaigning for a safer, fairer, more supportive school accountability system.

Bob Abrahart - For The 100, following the death of his daughter Natasha to suicide Bob is a campaigner for a duty of care in Higher Education to protect students and staff

Sarmad Nadeem FRCPsych. Dr Nadeem is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Lead for Community transformation at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust where he chairs the Suicide Prevention Committee.

Njal Long - Service Manager , Trauma-informed therapist and suicide prevention lead at We Are Survivors. A voluntary organisation who provides and facilitates safe spaces for males (inc. trans & non binary) who have experienced harms (sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitations)

Andy Smith - Andy runs Spectrum Gaming, a charity in Bury working with autistic young people. Andy is passionate about suicide prevention and will be talking about suicide risk and prevention with neuro divergent people
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Lorna Wilson - Interim Chief Officer of the Creative Living Centre, a mental health and wellbeing charity in Prestwich discussing the importance of community mental health support

Jim McGlynn - Suicide Prevention lead for Bury Council

In the afternoon we had a panel discussion on understanding commonalities within at-risk groups included Lorna Wilson to facilitate, Carly Bond, BIG from the perspective of those bereaved by suicide, David Catterall LGBTQ+ and Andrew Murray from Andys Man Club.

Conference delegates were also able to speak with local and national organisations through the ‘Mental Health Marketplace’ who currently support wellbeing and mental health in Bury and beyond with the aim of addressing factors that lead to increased risk in suicide ideation including housing, gambling, domestic abuse, isolation, bereavement and to discuss how to best improve services and support anyone who may be struggling