World Suicide Prevention Day - Your Life Counts releases new video.

Nicholas Knaap

World Suicide Prevention Day is celebrated in many countries and communities. In Canada, Your Life Counts released a new video featuring survivors of suicide loss entitled - remembering Nicholas. Nicholas Knaap died by suicide more than five years ago at the age of 20. This video features the survivors (the family and friends) who are coping with suicide loss.

Today - Your Life Counts released the following message.

Special Your Life Counts Message: 
September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day

“There are more than one million people who die by suicide each year in the world, which is more people than those who die from war, terrorist attacks and homicides every year…the problem [of suicide] is especially tragic because it is largely preventable.”

Brian Mishara, Psychology Professor; University of Quebec, Canada & Past President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP)

Your Life Counts.

YLC Founder Rory Butler has been working on the front lines of advocacy helping Kitchener-Conestoga MP Harold Albrecht to develop and progress a private member's bill to establish a national framework on suicide prevention. The proposal received overwhelming bi-partisan support in Parliament and it is expected to be passed in the upcoming session of Parliament. View the Parliamentary press conference here.

To the 4,000 families in Canada, the 34,000 families in the USA and around the world who have lost a loved one to suicide in the past year and to the many families who have lost a loved one in previous years, YLC expresses our deep, heartfelt sympathies to you all and encourage you to keep going no matter what. YLC is here for you. It’s important to talk. Keep talking.

An important DVD resource for survivors of suicide loss featuring an introduction by YLC Founder Rory Butler has been released in time for World Suicide Prevention Day. Supported by Bell Canada and other partners including CMHA and CAMH this important resource can be viewed online or ordered through www.rememberingnicholas.ca.

“Hope is dependent on having a sense of connection to the future, even if that future is very short term. Hope is the oxygen of the human spirit; without it our hope dies…”    Margaret Somerville; Ethicist, McGill University. Your Life Counts supports the call of CASP in their theme for World Suicide Prevention Day: ALL TOGETHER – PROMOTING HOPE AND RESILIENCE IN FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES and links arms with frontline agencies across North America and around the world in our work. Do you know the signs and symptoms of suicide? Click here.

Be A Champion of Hope Today! Link to U-Tube video with Nicholas's sisters.