Presenting at the National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025: Building Bridges Across CaLD Families
Updated: Sep 27
I’m deeply honoured to announce that I will be presenting at this year’s National Suicide Prevention Conference (NSPC25) in Perth - Australia’s flagship gathering of lived experience leaders, researchers, policymakers, and frontline advocates.
My presentation is titled:
Building Bridges: Fostering Intergenerational Dialogue on Mental Health and Suicide in CaLD Families
📍 Poster Session 2 | Tuesday 20 May, 5:30 PM | Poster #159
This presentation is more than a professional milestone - it is personal, political, and profoundly needed.
Why This Topic, and Why Now?
As someone from a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) background who lost my mother to suicide after years of being her young carer, I know firsthand how cultural stigma, silence, and shame can turn pain into isolation.
We didn’t talk about mental health. We didn’t have the words. And when we finally needed help - it was already too late.
This presentation introduces a new, evidence-informed and lived experience-led program that I’ve designed in response: The Intergenerational Dialogue Program (IDP) - a six-week online series that helps CaLD families talk safely, honestly, and culturally about mental health and suicide.
Why This Matters for Suicide Prevention in Australia
Australia is a multicultural country, but our suicide prevention approaches don’t always reflect that diversity. Here’s what the evidence tells us:
CALD Australians are less likely to access early support, but more likely to present in mental health crisis (AIHW, 2023).
Young carers from CALD backgrounds often carry invisible burdens in silence; especially when supporting a parent with trauma, mental illness, or disability.
Spiritual framing, family honour, and stigma often prevent open conversations about distress or suicidal thoughts in CaLD families.
Most mainstream programs still treat suicide prevention as an individual task, rather than a collective, family-based opportunity.
My presentation centres on this truth: we can’t prevent suicide in multicultural communities without understanding the family and cultural context. And we can’t ask families to talk about suicide unless we give them a safe, culturally grounded way to do so.
What I’ll Be Sharing at the National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025 (NSPC25)
At this year’s conference, I’ll be sharing:
The conceptual model of the Intergenerational Dialogue Program (IDP)
The cultural and clinical evidence base that supports it
A proposed pilot structure for national rollout via LEXs, my practice dedicated to lived experience transformation
An invitation to PHNs, suicide prevention networks, funders and multicultural organisations to support its implementation
This is a space where storytelling meets systems change. Where lived experience leads program design. And where silence is transformed - gently, bravely - into shared understanding.
An Invitation to Build With Me
If you’re attending the National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025, I warmly invite you to visit Poster #159 on Tuesday at 5:30PM and chat with me about how this work can complement yours.
If you’re a policymaker, service leader, or funder working in mental health, suicide prevention, or community wellbeing- this program is ready to be piloted.
Thank you Suicide Prevention Australia for organising this event. Let’s build something bold. Let’s make sure no young carer, migrant family, or community member ever feels they have to grieve in silence.
LEXs is Michael Elwan's Perth-based practice, working online across Australia. Services include training and workshops, lived experience consultancy, Social Work Supervision, Lived Experience Leadership Supervision, Frontline Supervision, therapy and keynote speaking. Training and workshops can be commissioned for organisational leaders, practitioners and frontline teams, and carers, families and communities. Explore LEXs services.
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