About Us

We are providing a new approach to show family and friends how to lessen the risk of attempted suicide and death from suicide in someone close to them. This is a huge problem all around the world.

In Tough Times Text is a family / community-driven suicide prevention initiative, supplementing conventional care if that is available.

The direct involvement of close contacts brings emotionally powerful forces to bear in a life and death situation, at no cost to the patient, family or health service. We request your help in providing publicity for what we do, and in sending us more high-impact texts and stories of survival to help others.

Our core message is

“You would never advise a friend to die; tell yourself what you’d tell a friend.”

Suicide is the most common cause of death and injury in Australians age 15 to 45, male and female (Australian Bureau of Statistics). This is almost 3x more frequent than death and injury by cars.

Plus suicide deaths per year
(Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Suicide attempts per year
(research estimate)

People consider suicide in a year in Australia
(research estimate)

Kristin Michaels

Chair

Kristin has a number of years of involvement and leadership within the healthcare industry in both public and private sectors. She has experience in organisational improvement and development of robust collaborations and partnerships, and governance experience in acute, aged care, community health and primary care.

Kristin has served as Chair of the Board at Yea District Memorial Hospital and is a Governor at the Windemere Foundation. In her work life, Kristin runs a national peak body in the healthcare sector operating in each State of Australia. A Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Kristin also has extensive experience as a professional mentor and executive coach and is a qualified futurist.

Clinical Associate Professor David Horgan

Founder & Medical Director

MB BCH BAO MRCPSYCH DPM MPHIL FRANZCP MD(Melb) FRCPEdin
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne
Previously Senior Specialist , Royal Melbourne Hospital
Consultant Psychiatrist in Private Practice

Clinical Associate Professor David Horgan did his medical education in Dublin. He has 6 specialist qualifications in psychiatry. He moved to the University of Melbourne and to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He is mainly involved now in private practice, particularly treating resistant depression and high suicide risk on an outpatient basis on referral from other psychiatrists.

He has an intense commitment to community suicide prevention. He established an Australia-wide freecall telephone suicide prevention service in 1997. He also established in the early 2000’s depression.com.au, suicideprevention.com.au and aftersuicide.com.au as community services. He subsequently established the registered Harm Prevention charity Australian Suicide Prevention Foundation, and he has worked with the Irish authorities to bring similar services into the Irish Republic.

Dr Horgan has been heavily involved over many years in lecturing to medical students, to GPs and also to psychiatrists, He has published in the areas of combined antidepressants, unusual medications and intensive patient contact, in an effort to reduce the suffering, job loss and relationship damage caused by depression in the community. He aims to help reduce the suicide and attempted suicide rates.

John Hardy

Director

John has enjoyed a career in telecommunications and IT, executive search and coaching and mentoring culminating in executive positions in Australia & Europe. His experience covers global marketing and management roles in the sales, marketing and services functions. He spent some years in France setting up and running a worldwide organisation dedicated to the Telco industry sector before returning to Australia and joining Motorola to launch the Pacific arm of their cellular infrastructure division. He became the international vice president responsible for Telstra, one of Motorola’s twenty global accounts, with responsibility for overall account strategy and the global executive relationship.

John joined ASPF in 2008.
John has extensive experience in strategy development and implementation, technology, sales & marketing and client relationship & contract management. He is a Fellow of the Australian Company Directors Association and has held commercial and industry Board positions. John holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration in addition to his Science degree.

Thomas Green

Director

Tom has a background as a digital marketing strategist and growth consultant, entrepreneur & a Director of Business Development directing organisations on their technology/digital strategic direction during the age of digital disruption, specifically focused on how to enhance/optimise the customer experience, whilst increasing reach and decreasing costs. He is practised in considering and mitigating risks arising from the security and integrity of data (from a regulatory and privacy perspective), IT systems availability and performance, to the larger business risk (and human cost in this instance) that comes from not being digitally competitive.

Dr Caterina Sloan

Director

Cathy is a General Practitioner in Brighton, Melbourne. She trained in Melbourne and the United Kingdom. Her initial interests were in Rural Medicine and developed a range of skills in anaesthetics, obstetrics and paediatrics. She has practised in Broome, the Torres Straits, Orbost and Horsham and had a busy practice on the Mornington Peninsula.

She is a firm believer in GPs being multi-skilled and having as wide as possible experience and has, over the last 15 years, had a great interest in mental health. She has a particular interest in the individual variation in patient’s response to medications and has been keenly interested in genetic testing for individual’s metabolism of drugs. In addition because of her extensive training in gynaecology she is interested in mental health issues relating to hormonal changes in women. She is passionate about the de-stigmatising of all types of mental illness through education and naturally about suicide prevention.

Mary Rose Morgan

Director, Treasurer

Mary Rose joined ASPF as a director in 2006 after a career in industrial relations and as a senior manager and deputy CEO of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. She was a director of a community bank for many years and had a private practice as a tax agent. Mary Rose is actively involved in community cultural organisations, especially those involving music.

Anne Warden

Adviser to the Board

Anne’s interest in mental health promotion began when she was a Psychology Officer in the Australian Army over 20 years ago. The experience highlighted how dedicated training, early identification, treatment and rehabilitation can assist in prevention and recovery. Following this, Anne spent a decade in agency side research consulting, conducting over a thousand groups, hundreds of interviews and many workshops across many industries. This has further honed her skillset in unravelling complex human behaviours to understand why people make the decisions they do. More recently, Anne has specialised in social research and program evaluation to tailor program outcomes and interventions in a mental health environment. As well as a Masters in Applied Psychology, Anne has recently completed a Graduate Certificate in Program Evaluation at the University of Melbourne.

Adam Lang

Adviser to the Board

Adam is a passionate technologist, with over 20 years’ experience in technology, business intelligence and analytics. Adam brings an inimitable depth of understanding to businesses, intermediating business owner and technological capabilities. During his career he has worked at the grass roots of IT, now successfully performing turnaround of Technology Businesses; through improved business process. Growing sales teams and expanding his professional network throughout Australia and the APAC region, Adam has successfully built tech start-ups from seed funding to technical growth into clients in multiple industry sectors through to sale.

Adam has a keen focus on child and youth mental health, working with charities to transform and digitise their environment. He brings a unique understanding of the challenges faced by marginalised young people and a focus on suicide prevention in workplace health and safety. He has a personal desire to connect to those industries and see the impact he can make with positive change. Having the energy and passion to work alongside other people with similar growth mindsets to make an impact in that sector would make Adam a significant contributor to any organisation looking to transform.

The Foundation

The Australian Suicide Prevention Foundation is a registered charity focussed on providing help for those considering suicide, and for their friends and relatives affected by such an event or risk.

Our core message is “you would never advise a friend to die; tell yourself what you’d tell a friend”.

Mission: To help change the landscape of suicide prevention in Australia
Role: Mobilising and guiding family and friends to help people with suicidal thoughts

Our values:
Life matters
We are independent and apolitical
We value community input and lived experience

Contact Us:
admin@aspf.org

We acknowledge that throughout Australia we are on unceded lands of Indigenous Peoples.

*Important Disclaimer: Our texts are approved by those who themselves had suicidal thoughts, and by medical and other mental health professionals. This site is medical information only, and is not to be taken as diagnosis, advice or treatment, which can only be decided by your own doctor or mental health professional.

Australian Suicide
Prevention Foundation

For over 20 years we’ve provided Australia-wide suicide prevention to every and any vulnerable Australian, whether they be in metropolitan, rural or isolated areas.

Connect

Support

By donating to or otherwise assisting inToughTimesText.org (a programme from ASPF.org) you are helping hundreds of thousands of people who have or will have suicidal ideas.

Built by Conscious Agency

Help save a life by sending our medically approved texts.* #inToughTimesText

Australian Suicide Prevention Foundation

A National Health Promotion Charity

About Us

“You would never advise a friend to die; tell yourself what you’d tell a friend.”

Suicide is the most common cause of death and injury in Australians age 15 to 45, male and female (Australian Bureau of Statistics). This is almost 3x more frequent than death and injury by cars.

Kristin Michaels

Clinical Associate Professor David Horgan

John Hardy

Thomas Green

Dr Caterina Sloan

Mary Rose Morgan

Anne Warden

Adam Lang

The Foundation