ALIA West

March 2003

New resource for suicide prevention

The Australian Suicide Prevention Information and Resource Exchange, to be known as ASPiRE, is a joint venture between the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Woodside Energy Ltd and the Ministerial Council for Suicide Prevention (MCSP).

The MCSP executive officer said "ASPiRE has been established in response to needs expressed by agencies and communities for ready access to sound, up to date information to assist in the prevention of suicide".

"As an online service, it is widely accessible to a range of people with varying needs, making this type of information readily available to people at the time that it can be of most benefit."

It is important that people realise ASPiRE is not a counselling service or crisis call centre but is designed to assist agencies and professionals with service provision and program development.

ASPiRE comprises the MCSP website and a database for the library that has in excess of 1 500 items including reports, references and links to journal articles. The database includes material in many formats including reports, training materials, videos, books, journal articles.

Material will not be loaned directly to the public, but made available via the interlibrary loans system. Requests may be submitted by mail, fax or e-mail (NUC symbol WPAS). Standard document delivery charges apply.

The database and other ASPiRE resources, can be accessed via the MCSP website at http://www.ichr.uwa.edu.au/sp/.