Chris Bowden: How men grieve the suicide of a mate - and what we misunderstand

You are at the moment, one of the many things that you're doing is designing a new degree in trauma transformative support.

Sounds like a lot.

Tell us about it.

Yeah, it's a long, it's part of my story to tell you the truth.

It's something that I think this country needs.

and we need to change the way that we support survivors of trauma.

The system that we have at the moment and the approach that workers take and professionals take to supporting survivors isn't one that aligns with best practice around the world.

So I'm creating this new degree to help survivors those professionals and people aspiring to get into this work with survivors to have the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to work safely and effectively with trauma survivors.

So first of its kind in terms of it being a broad area a broad degree that's going to help people in education, health, psychology, social work, education, to look at their systems and change their systems and make them more survivor-focused and more in line with trauma transformative principles.

So, yeah.

What differences would you bring, are you going to be bringing to the curriculum that we don't have at the moment?

Well, it's really related to your show, really.

It's one of the key principles is lived experience.

Lived experience alongside best evidence in terms of what we know works, but also what's acceptable and what is responsive to survivors' needs.

So the curriculum for these four courses is going to weave together two quite very different strands of knowledge you know what the research and evidence tells us is effective and ethical and responsive and then what the survivors tell us is needed and will work for them And, you know, I'm really excited about the fourth course in the degree, which is really about transforming leadership.

And it's about sending people back out into the world, into organizations and into support services who can upskill leaders.

change the system that they are a part of and really contribute to more responsive and transformative support in the community.

So yeah, it's going to be a really practice-based degree and something that I think is going to transform the way that we do trauma support in New Zealand.

and the lived experience angle

and the lens in which this material is being developed.

How has your approach and your view of lived experience as it pertains to suicide prevention moved and changed over the last few years?

Well, that's an interesting question, I think.

I don't think my view of the importance of lived experience has changed, but I think the discipline in the field has seen significant shifts in how much value is placed on lived experience and how important it is.

If I go back 10, 15 years, anyone who had lived experience who was trying to change a system or have some input into the design of services or who was trying to get involved in research and evaluation of support, would be listened to a little bit, but usually dismissed.

Any researchers or academics, practitioners who had lived experience kept pretty quiet about that.