Building Bridges Project

Exploring men at risk of suicide are supported by community initiatives and how they link to primary care settings.

Men account for approximately 75% of suicides both nationally and globally, with the South West of England among the regions most affected. While community initiatives play a vital role in supporting men with mental health challenges, a pressing question remains: when a man discloses suicidal thoughts, what happens next?

This NIHR Three Schools funded project is carrying out an adapted realist review to explore how men at risk of suicide are supported through community initiatives and how these approaches connect with primary care services in the Southwest. The focus is in Devon and Cornwall, but the aim is to build a foundation for wider learning about how to support men at risk of suicide across public health, health and social care systems.

The project is based on learning with and from those delivering support in practice. We recognise that frontline staff, community organisations and people with lived experience hold essential knowledge about what makes support meaningful, feasible and effective. We will bring this operational expertise together with the research and grey literature to create a fuller understanding of what works, for whom and in what contexts.

The project will produce information on:

• practices that can be adopted more widely
• approaches that may need further development with improvement teams
• opportunities for future research

We are doing this through three main activities:

• Stakeholder workshops to understand how support is delivered and shaped by relational, procedural and environmental factors.
• Exploration of research and grey literature to identify what is known about what works, where and how.
• Site visits to learn directly from people and services leading promising practice.