Combating suicide one smiley face at a time

Mr Tim Barritt, Lyndoch, has reached his 100th advertisement in The Leader for suicide prevention and mental health awareness, and he couldn’t be more grateful for the support from the community.

Tim’s first advert went into The Leader on June 23, 2013, and he didn’t expect the advertisements to run for as long as they have.

After his 15th advert in the paper, he asked for a sponsor and was lucky enough to have a community member throw their support behind Tim’s campaign.

“My aim is to improve people’s emotional health and wellbeing, and saving precious lives from suicide and general violence, in particular, gun violence and domestic violence,” said Tim.

“Since 1980, Suicides have gone from four and a half per day to eight per day, the highest it’s ever been. That’s one good Aussie every three hours. If you want to know why I do it, that’s why I do it. It’s bulk death
and because nobody else is doing suicide prevention in this way.

“My aim is to get my reader’s attention and I don’t care how I do it. [The top picture] is devoted to bringing the reader in, if I have to use sex, I will.”

Tim’s trademark is his smiley faces throughout his advert and the striking language used to grab the attention of readers.

He has also done extensive research into suicide and mental health to provide facts and figures to readers.

Tim has found that since 1980, the road toll has fallen dramatically, partly due to big marketing campaigns by the Government. However, that isn’t the case for suicide, which has increased drastically during this time.

 For the full story see this week’s edition of The Leader.