The K.I.S.S Movement - where "Kindness is the Initiative to Stopping Suicide"

Suzy lost her 19-year-old daughter, Georgia to suicide in 2016. This life changing event has sent Suzy on a mission to start saving lives. She is tired of hearing about the never-ending plan to try and reduce our suicide rates when all the while, our rates kept rising

Suzy has taken matters into her own hands and is travelling to Iceland in March 2020 to attend the latest “Planet Youth” conference.

She has managed to purchase her own recording equipment and worked tirelessly to connect with the founders of “Planet Youth” and key stakeholders who have already adopted this model in different parts of the world. The work and support she gives is unbelievable and all at her own cost.

It is her intention to give this model a greater voice in the hope that the Government will sit up and listen. Suzy feels like “a kid in the classroom with her hand up but nobody’s paying attention”.

The New Zealand Government’s newly formed “Suicide Prevention Office” is looking for evidence-based research to help improve our shameful suicide statistics. She has decided, because of her own experiences with regard to suicide, rather than wait for meetings, plans and commissions to take place, she will investigate & research and share this information herself.

PLANET YOUTH is an evidence-based model and over 36 cities throughout Europe have adopted this model. Briefly, in the 1990’s, 40% of Iceland’s teenagers were indulging in drugs and alcohol and over a 20-year period, that 40% dropped to 5%.

Suzy wants to make our Government (and any Government into the future) adopt and integrate this model in New Zealand in response to our high youth suicide rates. However, her attempts so far, have fallen on deaf ears.

She has started The K.I.S.S. Movement – (KISS is an acronym for Kindness, the Initiative to Stopping Suicide). Follow her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-KISS-Movement-100198378158690/ where she will update everyone on her journey through Iceland, parts of the United Kingdom and Europe in search of a better way of being.

Suzy will go as far as the money takes her and is not afraid of kipping on someone’s couch or the floor to get to the next destination. This will be NOT BE an extravagant holiday jaunt.

This page has started to help Suzy to complete the project and help our nation bring these suicide statistics down.

Comments from Suzy:

1) She says we should be bold and call it “Stopping Suicide” because that is what we all want to achieve.

2)She also says we should set a zero-suicide target, because if we set anything else, then we are saying some suicides are OK and some are not and we cannot do that. “The target must be zero and we must say it, even if it is an aspiration”.

3)Jacinda Ardern is currently not prepared to set a suicide target stating, there is no evidence that setting a target will improve our suicide statistics. Suzy says there is no evidence that setting a zero-suicide target will harm our suicide statistics either.

Suzy is grateful for all of the support and kindness that has been shown towards achieving this project and looks forward to sharing, with all of us, what she finds out upon her return.

Thank you