The ‘Pause.Call.Be Heard’ campaign in Victoria was formally evaluated by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Mental Health in 2018. It found that the campaign managed to reach a large proportion of Victorian train commuters and that its overall concept design was effective in engaging commuters in its key messages by evoking positive immediate reactions and encouraging help-seeking intentions and behaviours.
Importantly, it found “a significant increase in the proportion of crisis calls [to Lifeline] and a small non-significant decrease in the proportion of suicide related calls. While these changes cannot be conclusively linked to the campaign, the nature and direction of these shifts in help-seeking behaviour are interesting to note in view of the upstream nature of the campaign and its broad emphasis on crisis support rather than narrow or explicit focus on suicide. The 12.1% reduction in the overall number of rail suicide incidents recorded by Victorian rail companies over the 12-month campaign period (compared to the previous 12-month period) is encouraging.”
The evaluation report is available here.
See TrackSAFE’s current help-seeking activities here.