International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day: How We Can Become Beacons of Self-Compassion and Support

19 November 2021

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day is a day that allows people that have lost someone to suicide to gather together to share their memories, struggles and journey to rediscovering hope after loss. This special day finds its roots in the United States of America, when Senator Harry Reid lost his father to suicide in 1999. This led him to establish Senate Resolution 99, which officially designated the Saturday before Thanksgiving as the chosen day for awareness.

In the Philippines, much stigma surrounds the topic of mental health, with suicide being no exception. This is largely due to the traditional norms of a predominantly Catholic nation, with the perception that suicide is a grave sin against God. These opinions however cannot deny the prevalence of suicide in the country, further exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic: the latest figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released in July 2021 showed that death caused by self-harm increased in 2020 by 57% compared to 2019.

There are a few simple yet helpful ways you can practice self-compassion as you go through this intense and complicated grieving process. Understand that there is no timeline for grief. While it is good to open up, don’t feel obliged to be vulnerable before you are ready. You can start by writing down how you feel in a journal. This activity can help you acknowledge and process your emotions better. When the time comes that you decide to share your thoughts and feelings, confide in people you trust and feel you can speak to in a non-judgmental space.

If you have not had to experience losing someone to suicide, there are still ways we can extend our hands in support of these survivors. Show your support by validating their feelings: you can say something like, “I know this is a very difficult time for you, and I am really sorry for your loss. But I admire that you are finding a way to get through this process, and I want you to know that I’ll be here for you when things get difficult.” When someone is going through something as painful as grief, they may feel disoriented and out of balance in their day-to-day responsibilities. Offer a helping hand to help them accomplish simple tasks. You may also direct them towards grief counsellors or psychologists that can offer professional support and provide your loved one with healthy coping mechanisms. Always bear in mind that grief takes time and loss can change people, so we must learn to understand, empathize and respect every unique journey.

For the survivors of suicide loss, the team at Mind You prays that you find peace and enlightenment, while still being able to cherish the memories of your loved ones that have passed. It is one thing to lose someone in a lifetime, but quite another to lose a loved one in this way, and to be unable to speak about it openly due to the stigma that surrounds suicide in the country. Brene Brown once said: “When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity.” There is so much more to be gained in a country that openly speaks about struggles because in that recognition and vulnerability, knowledge and strength can sprout.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please direct them these free-to-call and anonymous help hotlines:

In Touch Philippines
+63 2 8893 7603
+63 917 800 1123
+63 922 893 8944

National Centre for Mental Health Crisis Hotlines
Luzon-wide Landline Toll Free: 1553
0917-899-8727 (USAP)
7-989 8727 (USAP)

Mind You aims to transform our culture and empower people to take control of their mental health and live more fulfilled lives. We take pride in lifting away the stigma, lowering counseling costs and providing increased access to mental health care for all Filipinos.

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Our Just Cause/s

19 November 2021

Phase out stigma towards mental health;
Increase affordability of mental health services;
Increase accessibility of mental health services;
Improve professional compensation and working environment.

"A Just Cause is linked to our WHY, our noble purpose for being. Our WHY comes from our past—it is our origin story and it is who we are. Our Just Cause is our WHY projected into the future. It describes a future state in which our WHY has been realized. It is a forward looking statement that is so inspiring and compelling that people are willing to sacrifice to see that vision advanced.”

– Simon Sinek, Author of Start With Why.

The responsibility of business is to use its will and resources to advance a cause greater than itself, protect the people and places in which it operates and generate more resources so that it can continue doing all those things for as long as possible. An organisation can do whatever it likes to build its business so long as it is responsible for the consequences of its actions.

To build this into Mind You, our foundation is looking 100 years into the future (to begin with). We expect to achieve growth, so we have the ability to serve millions more around the world, although sometimes it is important to strategically slow the rate of growth. This is to help ensure the security of the long-term or simply to ensure the organisation is properly equipped to withstand the additional pressures that come with high-pace growth. A fast growing retail operation, for example, may choose to slow the store expansion schedule in order to put more resources into training and development of staff and store managers. Opening stores is not what makes a company successful; having those stores operate well is. It’s in a company’s interest to get things done right now rather than wait to deal with the problems high-pace growth can cause later. The art of good leadership is the ability to look beyond the growth plan and the willingness to act prudently when something is not ready or not right, even if it means slowing things down.

In 2018, Larry Fink, the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock Inc, caused a bit of a stir in the financial industry when he wrote an open letter to CEO’s titled “a sense of purpose”. In the letter he urged leaders to build their companies with more idealistic goals than near-term financial gains. “Without a sense of purpose,” he explained, “no company, either private or public, can achieve its full potential. It will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders. It will succumb to short-term pressures to distribute earnings, and, in the process, sacrifice investments in employee development, innovation and capital expenditures that are necessary for long-term growth.”

We also see our investors and employees as owners. This is a long-term infinite mission we are working towards together, thus our owners must participate in the mission to their full-extent. Our investors and employees are onboarded with the same level of passion that our executive team has instilled. Passion comes from the latin word Patior, which means to suffer, to persevere through pain in order to achieve something greater than yourself. In the words of the late great Steve Jobs, “you have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing because it is so hard… if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”

For example, in this day and age where people are treated as data points and an inconvenience to support from companies all over the world, Mind You prides itself on not conflating our Users with data points. The people we serve are blood and bone, human-beings so we ensure their valuable data points are only used to improve the experience of the user, help them, consolidate and report so we and others can learn how to create products and services to better serve. We simply will never justify anything else. Our human approach is balancing technology and professionals to better serve communities and increase support and affordability for our beloved Users.

Our just cause is worth pursuing even if it results in an extra cost of doing business. Fulfilling one’s legal responsibilities does not release a company from its ethical responsibilities. Mind You is not a social company; we’re a company with unwavering ethics and morals at our core. We are a growing company with a just cause that necessitates longevity in business to create the positive impact we’re here to achieve. The test of our sincerity will be only to build long-term solutions for people hurting or wanting to improve. While there is much more to do, we commit to producing products and services that align with our mission of helping people become happier, healthier and more productive, because they deserve it. We hope our users, owners and clients embody these principals so we can change the landscape of mental health, together.

*This includes extracts from Simon Sinek’s book, The Infinite Game.

Cameron Quin

Vice President and COO