Hayley Purdon · 62 min
Rethinking Suicide Prevention with Hayley Purdon
A PhD researcher who once hid a suicide attempt as a headache is now dismantling the systems that made her too afraid to tell the truth.
Hear this story
Kintsugi Studio
Hayley Purdon · 62 min
A PhD researcher who once hid a suicide attempt as a headache is now dismantling the systems that made her too afraid to tell the truth.
Hear this story
Hayley Purdon spent years telling people her suicide attempt was an accident, a bad headache, anything but the truth. It took joining a lived experience committee in 2012 before she found language to describe what she'd been through, and years more before she could say it out loud to the people around her. By then, she was already deep into work that would reshape how she understood her own survival.
Before the fracture, Hayley's life looked ordered from the outside. Her parents gave her everything. But that protection left her unprepared when big emotions arrived in her teenage years. An eating disorder became the only way she knew to cope with anxiety so intense it made living feel unbearable. When she tried to reach out, the responses she got made her hide deeper. A doctor listing medical consequences instead of asking what was underneath. A boyfriend too young to know what to do with her pain. A therapist who wasn't the right fit. It took finding a clinical psychologist trained in mindfulness-based work to finally name the anxiety driving everything, and peer support networks where people understood without flinching to make survival feel possible.
Now Hayley holds a PhD examining what it's like to work in suicide prevention while carrying your own lived experience of it. She's spent nearly two decades in the sector and has become increasingly critical of how it operates. She's tired of the hero narrative, the language of saving fragile people, the assumption that someone who has been suicidal is too broken to contribute their knowledge. What people need, she argues, is not rescue. They need someone willing to sit with them in the dark and ask questions that honor what they're feeling. She likes who she has become. The experiences that nearly broke her built the person she is now.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
“I felt alone in my experience. I didn't have a language to describe what I had gone through, what I was going through.”
“I made a suicide attempt that ended up in a hospitalization and I denied till I was blue in the face that it was a suicide attempt. I didn't want to get locked up.”
“It seemed ridiculous to me that suicide prevention as a sector was a place that could not be safe for people who experienced suicide.”
The hero, today
Hayley needed language to describe her experience before she could begin to connect with others who felt the same way, and that label of lived experience of suicide became the first step toward speaking her truth. The responses that hurt most were not the absence of help, but help that missed the point: addressing the behavior instead of the emotion underneath it, which made her hide deeper rather than reach out further. Finding the right therapist was not a matter of luck but of persistence through multiple bad fits, and the one who helped was someone trained to name the anxiety driving her coping instead of treating the coping itself as the problem. Peer support networks where people share lived experience of the same struggles were as essential to her survival as professional therapy, because only people who had been there could sit with her without discomfort or fear. Suicide prevention as a system has moved away from viewing people with lived experience as unstable, but still frames them as fragile birds needing rescue instead of recognizing them as skilled people with knowledge the sector needs. What someone in suicidal distress needs most is not to be fixed or saved, but to have someone willing to sit with them in the darkness and ask questions that honor what they are feeling, not try to think them out of it.
Yes. Hayley Purdon is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Hayley needed language to describe her experience before she could begin to connect with others who felt the same way, and that label of lived experience of suicide became the first step toward speaking her truth.
The responses that hurt most were not the absence of help, but help that missed the point: addressing the behavior instead of the emotion underneath it, which made her hide deeper rather than reach out further.
Finding the right therapist was not a matter of luck but of persistence through multiple bad fits, and the one who helped was someone trained to name the anxiety driving her coping instead of treating the coping itself as the problem.
John Milham (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear. I have the privilege of talking to Hayley Purdon today, a passionate advocate who spent nearly two decades dedicated to helping people navigate their mental health challenges and improve the suicide prevention system. Hayley draws on her own lived experience courageously and openly, creating compassion and understanding in a space that truly needs it. She's researching lived experience in suicide prevention for her PhD and is breaking new ground and bringing powerful firsthand stories into the academic world, sometimes not so welcome in talking the truth. Join us as Hayley shares her purpose-driven journey from facing tough times to forging meaningful connections and Discover how lived experience can change hearts, minds, and the future of mental health support. Please join me in diving into Hayley's story. So, friends of Kintsugi Heroes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another podcast, another Kintsugi Heroes adventure into stories that matter. And today, lately I've been talking to people that are not just amazing stories, but they're cool people that I really like to talk to. And today is absolutely an example of that. I'm speaking to Hayley Purdon today. Welcome to Contiki Heroes, Hayley.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 01:47
Thank you for having me. It's so great to be here. And it's really weird to be on this side of the microphone because, you know, Yeah, normally I'm on your side of interviewing people and learning about people, so it feels a bit weird to be the one doing the talking today.
John Milham (Host) · 02:06
Absolutely. And, you know, to give our listeners context, right, you are— you've been like decades, almost coming up to 2 decades, working in the area of lived experience, suicidality, mental health, suicide prevention, intervention, all of those kind of, you know, the bucket of basically, you know, helping people deal with mental distress, that is, and the, the risk factors and protection factors around that. And in fact, you have a degree in suicidality, which is like a rare, a rare accreditation. And You have now, or just coming to the end of your PhD examining, you know, what was the subject of your PhD?
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Peer support networks where people share lived experience of the same struggles were as essential to her survival as professional therapy, because only people who had been there could sit with her without discomfort or fear.
This conversation includes finding a label for what she was living through, a purpose ripped away, protected from the world, unprepared for her own feelings, when help becomes a barrier, too sick to leave the house and finding the right therapist.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 02:58
Yeah, so the last 3 years I've been interviewing people like myself, people that have a lived experience of suicide and do suicide prevention work to find out what that experience is like for them. The research base is pretty scant when it comes to understanding what it's like to use your personal experience for suicide prevention aims. And so, like, talking with my peers like yourself and others, we know what it feels like, but communicating that can be really hard. And it's easy to dismiss one person's experience as an anecdotal experience. "Oh, well, that's just your experience." But actually, the way that we talk about how difficult or even how meaningful this work is, we have a lot in common in the way that we talk about it. And so really, my PhD was about making that as part of the academic and scientific record to say, well, this is a valid experience and this is what it's like.
John Milham (Host) · 04:09
That, and, you know, full disclosure to the listeners, you know, I had the pleasure of being allowed to go on and on about my experience with your research. It's extraordinary. Like, I get very excited listening to you just explain it because you have a clarity of concept that a lot of people don't have around these kind of subjects, you know. Mental distress and our reaction and our experience of it is not something people have traditionally been able to express well, or they certainly haven't been invited to express it, right? Usually locked doors, if at all. So it's so amazing the work you're doing. It's real trailblazing. But the idea, like your first lived experience committee, I note you joined in 2012. So it might be, if I'm allowed to venture down that, how did you end up in that space? In 2012, you knew you wanted to share your experience. What was the journey to get to that point?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 05:22
A long one, a lifelong one. I suppose I came to that Committee because I felt alone in my experience. I didn't have a language to describe what I had gone through, what I was going through. And I came across an advertisement that said a lived experience of suicide is classified as these things. And I saw my experience in that list of things and I thought, Oh, okay. So this is an experience that has a label and that others also experience. And so when I saw the advertisement for people to join that committee in 2012, I thought, well, why not express my interest and see what this is all about? Like, I had a horrible time feeling so alone with what I was going through. My thoughts of suicide and not wanting to be here was more the not wanting to be here and not wanting to face each day in the way that I was living. And so I thought, why not see what this is all about and try and help people to not feel that way? Because, like, it wasn't nice. And so I didn't want others to feel that way either. And so that's how I came to be on that committee.
John Milham (Host) · 06:54
I love that. It wasn't nice. That's perhaps the understatement of the world. Yeah, but so when, you know, how, uh, like, did you— you were at home, like, how, and, uh, you know, did you get to a place— do you think it was in you, or was it the circumstance around you? There's a lot of complex issues at play. What do you think was, um, bringing you to that period of not a very nice time.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 07:22
Well, I suppose if we look at where I was at in my life, in 2012, I was in my early 20s and I had finished high school and tried to go to university. I dropped out of the first degree that I enrolled in. I got through a year of that and then I had to change paths because of financial reasons. So then I picked up something else and, and that didn't work. And then I tried to do it again and that didn't work. And, and so I, I was just kind of in this place of being a bit lost. Um, I had a shitty retail job. I was also doing disability support work and it, it didn't feel like something I wanted to spend my whole life doing. And so I was looking for where I fit, um, you know, a core— like, it's easy to look back now on my life and, and find these threads and, and to explain them. Um, the, the— I've made sense of that experience. So the way that I reflect on it now is probably very different to how it was in that moment. But I look back now and I think that I've always been a purpose driven person. It's something I've been reflecting a lot lately about purpose and how I, um, throughout my whole life I've, I've looked for something that will give life purpose. And it's probably got to do with why I end up— ended up considering suicide. It's like, you know, well, what is the purpose of life? That whole deep philosophical thing. But yeah, in my early 20s, I, I was— I didn't have a purpose. I thought my purpose was to become a pilot, and that was my first degree that I started. But then when I, I couldn't complete my commercial pilot's license, um, you know, that purpose was ripped away. And, and so, yeah, the advertisement for this committee came at a time when I was seeking purpose, and I thought maybe helping others is— it could be my purpose. Yeah, helping others has been something that I've always— it's always been a comfortable place for me to give myself to others. And I think a lot of that has to do with my upbringing. My mother particularly instilled in me a sense of community and giving to others and putting others first. And so, Yeah, it just kind of seemed like it fit that he was this thing where it was helping others and making sense of something that was really difficult and using it for something positive. It just felt like the right thing to sort of get involved in.
John Milham (Host) · 10:24
Yeah, I really like the idea, you know, you mentioned looking back, things are sort of falling into some sort of pattern that helps you understand it. At the time, clearly losing a sense of who you are and where you are is a very isolating and isolated experience. What was true in your world that said, I'm alone, right? Were you able to reach out to friends and did you have someone to talk to, or was that not part of your world?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 11:02
Uh, that's a really complicated question. Um, yeah, I'm sure yourself and your listeners would understand you don't just wake up feeling alone. It's something that develops over years, and, and the way people respond to you when you, um, you know, uh, sort of ask for help or lean on other people, um, it's sort of like a conditioned response, the feeling alone. Um, Yeah, like, I suppose in explaining that, it's useful to look back through my childhood a little bit. Sort of high school is where things started to shift and change. Like, I come from a very privileged background. My parents worked really hard to give myself and my siblings everything we ever wanted. And so it's not like I can say I've experienced huge amounts of trauma, but in my privileged upbringing, I was also really protected from a lot of horrible things in the world. And so when I started to feel big emotions as a teenager, as all teenagers do, I didn't quite know what to do with them.. And I didn't know if they were normal or if others felt the same way because I had been quite protected from a lot of things growing up. And so I turned all of that inside myself. I'm not a person that kind of wants to impose on other people. I'm a middle child. Growing up, the house could be a little bit chaotic and there was a bit of conflict in the house, which made me quite aware of myself and how much I impacted others. And it made me notice other people and start to anticipate what might happen, what other people's behavior would lead to. And so I kind of, yeah, turned all of that kept all of my big strong teenage feelings internal and didn't share a lot. Plus this was growing up in the '90s and early 2000s and there was a lot of stigma around any kind of—
John Milham (Host) · 13:41
Yeah, who shared a lot, right?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 13:43
Mental health problems. Yeah. None of us. Celebrities being shamed for going going through mental health episodes and struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and lots of things in a public way, and they were shamed for it. And so, yeah, I think that kind of social environment also shapes how you relate to the world and how you relate to others. Yeah. And so I suppose all of that created in me the sense of feeling alone. Um, yeah, and it's not like, you know, I, I, um, I was struggling with an eating disorder through high school. That was my way of kind of coping with those difficult emotions. And there were conversations where, um, I sent little subtle signals that that might possibly be a thing that I was struggling with, to see, you know, like, see how other people would react. And when I was feeling like I didn't want to live anymore, it was the same sort of thing. Like, when I was about 20, 21 maybe, I remember telling my boyfriend at the time, I said that I didn't want to be here anymore. And he didn't know what to do with that. We were both so young. And so his discomfort in hearing me disclose that kind of then instilled, "Oh no, this is not something that you share with other people." Yeah. And yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 15:40
So interesting because you're not taught how to do that. And, you know, there's so much going on. I'm really grateful for you bringing that up. You know, the idea of having your expectations about being supported just not met, right? And your expectations of purpose not met, right? That's like a trauma. But Well, what's fascinating is the skills, the things you did to send an invitation to be helped, and no one was able to pick up that sense of invitation. That's really what we're trying to introduce to the world now, isn't it? Like people being aware that this is something you can do. You can answer that invitation, or you can inquire, go deeper with it. But what did you do when those signals weren't received?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 16:36
Well, it made me a lot more private about what I was going through. Like a good example, my— like once I was a— how old would I have been about? 15, 16, and it was right at the start of my eating disorder really becoming part of my way of coping. And I, I started eating chocolate chip cookies and I just, I couldn't stop. And then I felt sick. And so then I went into the bathroom because I was feeling sick, and my mum was home, and she came to me and she said, "What are you doing?" And her response to seeing what I was doing was to tell me all of the things that bulimia did to your body, all of the wrong, all of the bad things that bulimia did to your body. And she thought she was educating me, in the impact of what I was doing. And it overlooked the psychological struggle that I was going through that led to that. And it focused—
John Milham (Host) · 18:08
It's like a choice. Oh, well, you're making a choice to go down the bulimia path, right? As if that was, you know, something you just plugged into your navsat.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 18:17
Yeah. And so really, you know, that responses like that just made me more secretive and made me learn to hide what I was doing because, yeah, it just cemented that it was wrong. What I was experiencing was wrong.
John Milham (Host) · 18:41
Amazing moment there that you're sharing. So that idea of sometimes people trying to connect or care can actually create a barrier.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 18:54
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 18:54
So what, what, um, what if you weren't, you know, you're now being secretive about it and so on, how did that, um, get out, right? So it's all building up, there must have been pressure building up. So what did you do about that?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 19:13
Yeah, it got to a point where, um, I, I was quite sick. Um, not visibly sick, but, um, like, I couldn't leave the house because I had become so preoccupied with what other people thought of me. I was terrified that they would find out just what a mess it was inside my head, that it would be visible to the world when I left the house, that this is what I was going through. I was in this state of chaos, and they could see that what I was doing was something so shameful. And so it got to a point where I just wouldn't leave the house. And it's part of the reason why I dropped out of university so many times, and I struggled to find that purpose and what I wanted to do with my life, because how can you How can you grow as a person when you're just struggling to survive day by day? And so, yeah, like, I tried to get help. It's not like I was experiencing all of this hurt and pain in my head and I didn't do anything about it. There was so much stigma about eating disorders, and that was the primary thing that I was going through that made my life so unbearable. That I went to the doctor, my doctor who's a wonderful person, and said to her that I was feeling depressed because that was more okay to express than I had raging bulimia. And so that was me dipping my toe into asking for help from a professional. And the therapist I saw wasn't a good fit for me. And so then I went back and then I finally was able to say to her what was actually going wrong, that, you know, I was struggling. I think I, I believed I was struggling with an eating disorder and I didn't want to live anymore. And then I was able to get the she referred me to a specialist who actually knew how to deal with those things. Like, to be able to be honest meant getting the right help. Um, and, and that's when things really started to turn around, when I, I was a, a clinical psychologist who had, um, experience with eating disorders. And, and that was when things started to turn around. And I, I learned so much about myself from her. And it wasn't, you know, there's the stereotype of going to a therapist and going back through your childhood and finding your moments of trauma and unpacking that and coming to— wasn't like that at all. We didn't talk about anything to do with my life or, you know, my past or anything. She did this mindfulness-based therapy with me. So that I could learn how to manage the intense anxiety. She labeled it anxiety that I was feeling. I, I didn't know I had anxiety. I, like, no one had ever— no one had ever pinpointed that, and I hadn't pinpointed that. But the thing that was driving my, um, my eating disorder behaviors was this intense anxiety, and that was my way of coping with it. And And so, yeah, it was this way, she, the mindfulness-based therapy was a way of her sort of coping with all those difficult emotions that I'd been struggling with since being a teenager and having like them bloom. I could finally learn how to process those and learn how to coexist with those and not be so afraid of them. So yeah, it was that particular therapist who really started to turn things around.
John Milham (Host) · 23:22
I think it's really important what you just pointed out there, that it worked when you found the right person. So often, in my experience, there were a lot of people that weren't the right people, right? And it's kind of left me with a feeling that there aren't many right people out there, right? Which is probably unfair. It's based on my experience. You know, one of the things I often feel people need to know is keep trying to find the right person. You just described a classic example of how hard you had to work to get the help you needed.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 23:58
Yeah, well, if you think about it, not everyone that you come into contact with on the street or through your life, you don't like them all. What makes you think you're going to like and connect with the first therapist that you walk through the door of the office to?
John Milham (Host) · 24:12
Like, yeah, yeah.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 24:14
We all have so many different experiences and different ways of being in the world. It's actually really hard to find people that we connect with in a genuine way. I don't know why it's believed that with therapy, you're just going to connect with somebody.
John Milham (Host) · 24:31
Because, you know, robots are being built. Make an appointment and it'll all be good, right? Yeah, but you walk in, it's a ridiculous kind of bit of a lottery to believe that the person in the room is going to be the right one for you. You to, when you haven't been able to connect with anyone up till then, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eating disorders, you know, it's such a problematic area, and it seems to be, um, there are certain, you know, sort of elements, uh, where it's— where you are more vulnerable, right? You know, and often young, young women, and, you know, perceive the world in a certain way, and that leads to something like eating disorders. From talking to people, they often give it a personification. Did your eating disorder feel like you, or was it like— did it feel like you were being kind of attacked or possessed, or, you know, was there something going on? Was it, you know, from inside you or from outside?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 25:34
Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and one I I don't think I have a proper answer to yet because, um, uh, I came to label what I was feeling and what I was doing through the discourse about eating disorders. Um, in high school we had a session on pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia, um, forums because they were a big deal in the early 2000s on the internet. And, um, and so that gave me terms to describe what I was experiencing, the language of your situation. Yeah. And then I found myself into these forums, and, um, I connected with other people who were mostly young people who were going through, um, and doing this similar things to what I was doing. And we would share, use the language, um, and we would have you know, we, we'd call it by these clinical terms and, and describe it, um, in, in the negative way that it is described in the medical profession, that, um, that it was wrong to do these things, um, restricting, binging, purging, all of those clinical terms. Um, that was just the language that we were given to describe what we were going through. And so, um, the personification that you mentioned, that, that was a common thing, um, that was discussed in the, the medical profession and in therapy, labeling it as something external to you and not part of your own internal person is— can be a useful way to help you recover from it. Because I suppose the thing from— for my experience with, um, bulimia, it's really easy to believe that it is you. Um, and I don't know if you've ever tried fighting with your nature. It's bloody impossible. And there were so many times where I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop doing what I'm doing. I'm gonna stop binging. I'm gonna stop purging.
John Milham (Host) · 27:54
I'm gonna stop on Monday morning. I'm going to— like Yeah, yeah.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 27:59
And it doesn't work. It doesn't work because—
John Milham (Host) · 28:02
I think I'm 99 and 1 against my nature.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 28:06
Yeah. And it seems like, yeah, it kind of became, it was interlinked with who I was. I thought I'm nothing without my eating disorder behavior. Like, how will I cope with life if I don't have this thing that brings me, that soothes me, that allows me to bring my level of stress down to a manageable level. Um, and so labeling it as something external is a useful way of separating it from your sense of self. And, um, yeah, for me, I suppose I did refer to my eating disorder in the third person. Um, I've got so many journals. Journaling was always a way for me to get out my difficult emotions. And, you know, I'd say things like, "Oh, Mia is back," and all those sorts of things. But I'm not sure how—
John Milham (Host) · 29:08
Her name was, you know, so the eating disorder was named Mia, right?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 29:14
Yeah. Well, that's what everyone else called it. Anna for anorexia, Mia for bulimia. Um, yeah, I'm not sure how useful that was because I look back on it now and I see that my eating disorder really helped me to survive. Um, it was the only way I knew how to cope with such challenging emotions and such highs and lows. And if I didn't have that, I don't know how I would still be here. Yeah, it was my way of coping and it got me through. I wouldn't say it's the best one and I wouldn't recommend it as something to do, something to cope. But yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 30:07
It's always like, I'm so like, that's so interesting. The idea that, you know, if you look at, say, family systems with IFS, right? So, you know, but they talk about the parts of us. We need to be grateful because that's adaptive behavior, right? You know, it was successful because you're here, right? So your survival is as a result of your ability to adapt. It's not, you know, often there's challenges, right, as a consequence of of taking a certain adaption process to heart. And, but it still worked. Right. So it's really, it's like suicide prevention, right? The world's telling us that we're, we're doing something really wrong. But we're here. So we're actually successful at managing stuff that's really difficult to manage. So did you get to gratitude?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 31:02
Yeah, I I am immensely grateful for everything that I've been through in my life. It's made me the person I am today, and I really like who I am. There were many years where I didn't like who I was, but now I see that actually I am a good person, and my experiences and all of these really difficult things that I've been through, they give me something of value. Um, yeah, like, it's given me purpose. Um, I, I connect with others on an incredible level. Um, they're like— when I, when I mix in circles of people with lived experience of suicide, nothing's off the table. Like, we're just open and honest and happy to be in the same room and to share um, whatever. Um, whereas if I didn't have that experience, I would have probably fear related to suicide, fear related to the thought that, you know, someone could want to die or want to kill themselves. Like, um, all of that's gone. I don't— yeah, I don't know how you couldn't be grateful for that.
John Milham (Host) · 32:19
I love the idea, you know, like the very things that you had to learn because the world was so unavailable to help you, where you mentioned you became very good at reading the room and people around you and so on. Of course, that was training for being very good at research and very good at supporting and very good at advocacy. So you went to the hard knocks school, really.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 32:45
Yeah. And that's not to say that it's the only way to learn those things. Yeah, I don't mean to— there's a risk of glorifying having to go through struggle. I remember, you know, when in my younger years, it was kind of, yeah, I got this sense that it was glorified to go through pain and suffering and trauma. And I think it's got to do with the fact that I had such a privileged upbringing and I had these really horrible feelings and the two were disconnected. Um, the, um, one of your other guests spoke about, um, uh, the comparison, you know, um, well, they're starving kids in Africa, you know, you don't have it that bad, why are you so— why are you feeling sad when you've got it good? And so like, I don't know, I— you get the sense you're not justified to feel difficult emotions and you have to go through something traumatic in order to feel that way. And, and so yeah, throughout my life there's been a disconnect of, well, I haven't gone through huge amounts of trauma, it doesn't explain why I feel so shitty right now. And, and so yeah, I, I don't, I don't think you need to go through something difficult in order to take learning and growth from an experience or from your life. I think the two are independent of each other.
John Milham (Host) · 34:26
Yeah, it's interesting. Is some knowledge worthy and some not worthy? You know, like, you know, the world is sort of trying to tell people that some of their experience is not valid and some, you know, and they must follow certain rules of society or stigma to be, to have valid experience, right? Maybe that's, you know, something to, you know, I personally believe the university we've attended is a very good one, right? The University of Lived Experience, right?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 34:57
So, yeah, there's still an element of having to play the game a little bit though, and I, that's why I have persisted with going to university, and even in doing my PhD research is to enter that life experience, that life university, the wisdom from that, enter that into the academic setting. Because I don't think we're there as a society yet to truly elevate and embrace the wisdom from lived experiences. Um, and so there's still an element of needing to play the game a little bit and to, um, validate that wisdom through their own rules. I think, yeah, that's why I do the work I do.
John Milham (Host) · 35:49
Yeah, I think that's like— I would say, um, that's the practical realization that the world is political as well as, you know, thing. Uh, which brings me to like, you created Critical LE or Critique LE or Critique L, you know, like I'm still— you'll have to share how I should be pronouncing it, which is an organisation really that was about advocacy. So, you know, in 10 years being, you know, beginning your lived experience in the sector, kind of, oh, can I make a difference to people around me taking what I've been through and making it and putting it to purpose? You got to a point where you created your own organisation. What were you hoping to achieve? What was the aim of putting yourself out there as the head of an organization?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 36:37
I suppose that organization came about because I was fed up and frustrated with the way things were going in the suicide prevention sector. Yeah, I mentioned before about playing their game. I'm sick of it, really. The last 10 or so years, the lived experience movement in suicide prevention has grown exponentially. That very first committee was all about just destigmatising people with lived experience. There was still so much fear around, oh, if you've been suicidal, you're unstable and likely to die by suicide later. There's a focus in the sector on languages around risk and, you know, previous experience with suicide means that you're at greater risk of dying by suicide in the future, whether that's, you know, you've lost someone to suicide or whether that's your own personal experience, you're at greater risk. Oh my goodness, we can't allow you to participate, we need to protect you. And so that's what it was like and it was about stepping into that and saying, hey, look, I'm normal. I can do stuff. I'm not gonna fall over tomorrow because you hurt my feelings. And so I think the sector's come a long way from that perspective. We've done a lot of destigmatizing. And now we had to do that through things like this storytelling. And to say, "I've come through this experience, but recovery looks like this for me." And now we've come through all of that, and I think it's a lot more destigmatized experiencing suicide, and it's a lot more okay to be a person who has experience and not have people afraid that, you know, you're a risk. And I didn't see the sector growing quick enough in that regard. I see a lot of storytelling still happening and involvement being at arm's length. There's things around, you know, we make sure people are ready to participate before they step into the room, you know, "Has it been long enough since your experience?" "Are you sufficiently recovered to be able to talk about it without getting emotional?" God forbid you get emotional about a difficult difficult experience in your life, rather than the sector saying, "You're safe here. Yeah, come here. You show your emotion to us. This is a challenging thing. We'll create this environment so that you can step in wherever you are on your journey." It seemed ridiculous to me that suicide prevention as a sector was a place that could not be safe for people who experience suicide. It just seems ridiculous. And so the whole idea behind Critical or Criti-Kelly, whatever you want to say, however you want to say it, the whole idea was to say we need to shift lived experience inclusion. It's not enough to have them telling stories to break down stigma. People with lived experience have huge amounts of skill. They've got other lives that we overlook because all we see is their lived experience. They've worked in corporate situations, they've worked in training, research, like all these other skills that we just discount because all we see is their lived experience. And so I really wanted to change the conversation to one of a critical analysis of how we involve people, to really think about, are we doing enough? Are we doing it the right way? Let's start to think about the assumptions that we have about people with lived experience and to see if they're accurate or not. And yeah, to have different conversations because I'm sick of telling my story to people and I'm sick of having other people tell their story. I want to see I want to see what they're really good at because it's not just their story that makes them an incredible person.
John Milham (Host) · 41:17
So true. I think that the story is great, but I would love the next question not just be, oh, what happened to you? But, oh, what do you now know that is relevant for me? Exactly. Yeah. So, so interesting because When you— the passion is infectious there, right? And I love that. When you joined into that first committee in 2012, was that a recovery move or was that something you were stepping into and saying, I think there's something wrong and I'm going to start exploring that? Or was it, I think I'm ready to do something for myself to recover? To take ownership of my own recovery?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 42:01
It's both. Um, probably the big thing though was that it was my first step in talking about what I had experienced. Um, I joined that committee before I'd even told friends, family, people in my life that, um, that I had been through this experience. See, um, I made a suicide attempt that ended up in a hospitalization, and I denied till I was blue in the face that it was a suicide attempt. I didn't want to get locked up. I didn't want to be forced to have involuntary treatment. And I knew through my, um, my friends that I had made through my eating disorder circles that that was something that was very real, to have your choice and control taken away. And to be forced to have treatment that you didn't—
John Milham (Host) · 42:56
For no real benefit at the time apart from sort of basic physical safety.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 43:02
Yeah. And so that I was afraid of that. So I said, no, no, no, it was an accident. It wasn't a suicide attempt. I think my excuse was I had a really bad headache. And so Yeah, that, that was the reality that I told the world about my suicide attempt. And, and so that was the party line that I towed until this committee, and I started to think, well, maybe it was okay to admit what had really driven, um, the thinking behind what I had done, and that actually it was me attempting to not be here anymore.
John Milham (Host) · 43:47
Yeah, wow.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 43:48
And so, yeah, there was a point, it was years into this committee because I was involved in that organization for a long, really long time. And it was years into the committee, we were talking about something. I can't remember what it was, but I shared with the group, and I became emotional, and I cried uncontrollably. And I said, I haven't told anyone this. I haven't even told my parents. But I'm telling you now, like, it, it took years to be comfortable enough with these people who had already shared so much of their own selves with me for me to admit, um, that, that I had made a suicide attempt. Um, and, and so really it was a recovery journey. It was me learning to voice what I had been through. The being involved in the sector gave me language to describe what I had experienced because I had my own language, you know, things like, "I don't want to be here anymore. I can't handle this pain. This isn't a life worth living." But to call it suicide Suicide attempt, like it gave me words that weren't so emotional to—
John Milham (Host) · 45:09
So ideation is like me having an idea, but it seems like it's not, you know, only just me. It's sort of much more handleable.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 45:18
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 45:20
Yeah.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 45:20
Yeah. So, um, it definitely was a huge part of recovery for me. Um, and like, I still think about suicide sometimes, and I learn more about my life with thoughts of suicide, then it's never going to go away. I feel things deeply and I think that life has no inherent purpose and we have to create our own purpose. And so when I'm tired and I don't want to create my own purpose, I fall back on, well, if there's no purpose, why be here? And so it's just something that I live with and it's, yeah, it's just my reality. And so recovery in the sense of recovery, it's just something that's an ongoing process. There's never recovered, there's never this is finished and now I can sail off into the sunset. Yeah, I think that's just life that you constantly are working on yourself and growing as a person.
John Milham (Host) · 46:27
Extraordinary thoughts there around like the power, you know, because you expressed, um, uh, you know, some satisfaction with your relationship with your therapist, but you also— it's also clear in what you were saying how important your association with those girls on the forums, you know, that lived experience, and then the lived experience of that, of the people on the committee. So, you know, Is that the model we should be encouraging? There are voices of clinical support, but the lived experience voices are also really crucial to getting through some of the challenging things that we're talking about.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 47:09
Yeah, I don't know what I would have done without my peer support networks around me. They are the ones that truly understand what it's like to be me in the world. Because they experience the same things. And having someone who understands is just so incredibly powerful. Being able to talk openly without fear of shame or stigma or discrimination is just the most life-changing experience. Like with my eating disorder, there is so much shame around eating disorders and like it's developed through the way that we respond. It's deeply uncomfortable when somebody refuses food as a life-sustaining thing. Even when someone considers suicide, it's deeply uncomfortable because Why? We think, why would you choose to damage yourself or to, you know, cause some— to do something that is likely to hurt you in a lethal way even? Why would you do that? And so it's so uncomfortable. But if you connect with someone who knows what that's like, there's no shame, there's no stigma around that. The peer support stuff is that's the most important part, I think, of going through suicide and other mental health challenges. The professional support is important to see other ways of being in the world. Like, you know, you yourself, you've done lots of research and lots of study into clinical frames and ways of being in the world. Um, it's just another form of learning and another framework of being in life. Um, and we, we get in our lived experience, we get one way of being in life, and that has value and can communicate things to other people. But then the study and the learning that professionals go through gives you more frames, like, you know, lots and lots of different frames, and who knows to say which one of those experiential or academic frames is going to fit. And yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 49:50
I love that way of putting it. I would say they're both necessary, and I love that you talked about how lived experience gave you one language that was necessary, but also the experience with the counsellors gave you another. You got the terms that you could start to put some fencing around what was going on. So it wasn't like your identity required you to herd the monkeys. I wonder why it seems like that society doesn't want to face some of those big questions. The idea you were saying of talking about death or talking about refusing food or even trying to take your own life seems to be so difficult for society to accept that they shy away from it and then don't want other people to talk. So they put punishment on the sharing of that info. It's almost like, you know, someone trying smashing a diamond with a hammer. They feel like it's reducing value out there. But it isn't the language like science can't give you the language of holding someone's hand.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 51:12
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 51:13
So how do we promote the value of, you know, sharing silence with knowing energy or holding someone's hand when there is nothing they have to anchor themselves with? How do we promote— you talk about advocacy, right? And that's, you know, how do we tell them, you know, everyone knows it and yet it's not making a difference, it's not penetrating. How do we get that message to the system?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 51:46
If I reflect back on my own experience, Um, I think the thing that's important is to be okay to be uncomfortable. Um, like, nothing's going to make suicide comfortable. Nothing's going to make eating disorders comfortable. They are difficult experiences to go through, and they're difficult experiences to hear about. Like, I don't think anyone is okay sitting watching the suffering of another person and just, you know, snacking on the popcorn. We want to rescue, we want to stop people's pain. I think that that's just within our nature as humans. But that's not the important thing at that moment. The times when I've expressed my challenging emotions and somebody responds by saying, 'Oh, you know, don't worry about that. You've got lots of other good things in your life. Think of your family. Think of all the happy things.' That's not what I need to hear when I'm in those dark moments. That's not what I want. I want someone to sit with me in the dark moments. I want someone to go, 'Oh, okay. So how dark is it for you? Oh, you know, where— what's the source of the darkness?' tell me about it, tell me what it feels like, tell me what it sounds like, tell me what it tastes like. All of the questions that allows me to express where I am rather than to have someone fix me. And that is uncomfortable for a helper, a person sitting with that person, really uncomfortable. But if we could get comfortable with that, I think that would, would solved a lot.
John Milham (Host) · 53:34
Yeah. What do you— I love that idea, right? But clearly, you know, you expressed your dissatisfaction so passionately before. What do we need to change? What, at a systemic and a cultural level, you know, what would be better?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 53:53
In the suicide prevention space, we get a little bit caught up on language. But I think there's a very good reason for that. You know, like I've talked about how my involvement gave me language. The medical profession has given me language. We need language to be able to articulate our experiences. And we need to articulate our experiences if we're going to get help from other people. But some of the language we use is also a barrier. In suicide prevention, I see a predominance of the risk-based language, for one, but also, how many times have you seen, "Oh, we need to keep people safe from suicide"? "You can save a life." Like there's some kind of hero complex in the suicide prevention sector and that people who are experiencing suicide are these little fragile birds that need protection and to be saved.
John Milham (Host) · 54:59
Sometimes I want to go, "Get off me, get off me, I'm okay." I don't want to be saved.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 55:06
I just want someone to validate what I'm going through and to help like sit with me until tomorrow when I'll feel differently. And like, it's a really simple one. Why don't we stop saying that? And then by shifting our language, we can shift some of the beliefs behind it. In my research, I delved into some of the policy landscape and the history around lived experience involvement and how we came to understand suicide. Suicide's a socially constructed phenomena. It's something that we've put a name to and we've put conditions around to say, well, if it's an intentional act, if it has the purpose of ending one's life, it's called suicide. That's socially constructed, right? And so all of that, like if we shift some of the language, we can change some of the social stuff, the baggage that we have, that we've brought for years and years, you know, since suicide was criminalized, since people were viewed as insane, unable to control themselves, even in our mental health legislation today, we lock people up because they're a danger to themselves if they're expressing a desire to die. We've said in legislation that they are a danger to themselves and they cannot be— they cannot control— we cannot trust them to control their own behavior. That's socially constructed, and that is an assumption that lots of people have in community. But yeah, if we start to change some of that language around saving people from themselves, maybe we can start to shift some of those social attitudes and understand suicide in a more— in a way that people who experience suicide actually understand their experiences.
John Milham (Host) · 57:06
That's brilliant. It's interesting because suicide, you mentioned, is at the end of a process, right? So suicide prevention should be about helping people manage everyday challenges before you get to the point where, you know, you described in your own case how things escalated. You're unable to— many times you reached out for help and didn't find it, and then you got to a place, uh, where there was no other option in front of you, right? And I, I think that's a very common experience. So how upstream life is challenging, we've got tough economic times, we've got relationships, keeping relationships fresh and safe, and, and, you know, we've got clash, family clashes, social clashes, we've got housing insecurity, food insecurity, climate insecurity, all of these things are challenging. How do we move the focus from the end to the beginning of helping people? What do you think's key for that?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 58:06
I think that's a political question. Yeah, in the way that I see it is, it's easy to focus on something as dramatic as being suicidal. It gets people emotional, it pulls at the heartstrings, it creates a sense of urgency if we say, you know, More people die by suicide than die on Australian roads. That is confronting, it's scary, it's something that spurs on action. But if we say we need to support fathers when their relationships break down because the system favors females and so women are more socially connected and it's a lot harder for men to cope in that because they have no, um, social support. As an example, as an example, that is a lot less glamorous and, um, doesn't pull at the heartstrings as much. But getting a man support when he's struggling with his relationship ending and access to his children changing, that could be the life or death thing. Um, but yeah, I don't know, it's political to, to shift that. Um, governments fund things that make them look good, and if it's saving lives, um, by preventing suicide, yeah, I don't know, it's a hard one. It's a systemic problem.
John Milham (Host) · 59:55
Um, If I ask you, like, given that, you know, all that you've told us about your journey and the work you do, would I— if I'd said you, I could change everything so you wouldn't have any of those challenges or problems growing up and getting hurt and getting help and having that, would you consider taking that, you know, making that wish true?
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 1:00:29
I would be a very different person without all of that. Who knows what I would be? Is it better the devil you know in that? I don't know. I'm not really one that looks back with regret and wants things different. There's no point doing that because it's impossible to do. So It's not something I've spent a great deal reflecting on, John. Yeah, I don't know, I like who I am and my experiences made me who I am. The people in my life made me who I am. Yeah, I don't think I would change it.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:11
Well, I think that's beautiful because I like who you are too. And the Kintsugi Heroes folks are very, very pleased that you gave us so much of your time today. Thank you, Hayley, it's been amazing. Cheers.
Hayley Purdon (Guest) · 1:01:24
Yeah, thank you for having me, it's been great. I always love chatting with you.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:35
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Colin Lilley for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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