World Suicide Prevention Day: How York Region Is Marking September 10

What is September 10 actually for?

World Suicide Prevention Day falls on September 10 every year. It is organized by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), co-sponsored by the World Health Organization, and it anchors a stretch of September that the Mental Health Commission of Canada and others mark as suicide prevention month: a few weeks to talk more openly about suicide and have conversations about mental health.

For 2026, IASP is again running the theme it introduced in 2024, changing the narrative on suicide, which asks all of us to move from silence and stigma toward compassion, conversation and care.

Changing the narrative on suicide takes time as stigma, fear and shame surround this topic making it difficult to discuss openly. Most people who are struggling with thoughts of suicide do not announce it. If it is mentioned at all, what they share may not directly mention suicide. Instead, they may communicate hopelessness, speak about having a hard time coping, or mention feeling like a burden to others. Behaviour changes matter too, such as visible changes in mood, withdrawal, and more time spent alone. How you respond when you notice signs like these matters enormously.

Which is where Rick comes in.

Why Rick Spence talks about his brother

Nearly ten years ago, Rick Spence answered the phone early one morning and learned that his older brother, his hero, had died by suicide.

What followed was not the typical arc of grief people imagine. Rick struggled in ways he did not, at first, recognize as struggling, and it took time to understand how deeply the loss had affected his own mental health and to begin working through it. Anyone who has lost someone this way will know that lag: the weeks or months where you look like you are continuing to function, but something underneath is quietly coming apart.

The experience also revealed a difficult truth, and it is the one he keeps coming back to. Suicide does not end with one person. It reaches families, friends and entire communities, and it leaves a great many people to navigate the warning signs, the grief and the aftermath on their own. The Public Health Agency of Canada puts that reach plainly: for every death, at least seven to ten loved ones are significantly affected.

For the past decade, Rick has worked to bring mental health out of the darkness and into the light: raising awareness, reducing stigma, encouraging people to seek support. That journey eventually led him to CMHA York Region South Simcoe, and to a mission he connected with immediately — that no one should have to face a mental health challenge alone.

He is not the first person to lend us his story. Peyton also shared hers with us two Septembers ago.

What do you say to someone you’re worried about?

This is where most people get stuck, and the fear is often: What if I say the word out loud and put the idea in their head?

By asking directly about thoughts of suicide, you will not put the idea in their head or plant anything. It far more often does the opposite: it gives someone permission to stop pretending and provides an invitation to open up. Most people living with thoughts of suicide are not looking to die. They are looking for the pain they are experiencing to feel more manageable, and being asked about it plainly can be the first thing that makes relief feel possible. Knowing that there is someone who cares can make a difference.

So ask. Then do the harder part, which is to  allow space for a reply and to let the answer arrive at whatever speed it arrives. You do not need a solution ready. You do not need the right words. Most of what helps at first is simply staying, listening, and demonstrating understanding.

Knowing what to watch for helps too. We keep a fuller guide to the warning signs of suicide risk on the site, including what to do when the thoughts are your own.

If you want to learn more, that is what suicide intervention training is for, and you do not have to go far to get it. Our branch runs a two-day ASIST workshop, which teaches you to recognize when someone may be at risk and how to help them stay safe, and safeTALK, a shorter session on noticing the signs and connecting a person to help. You do not need a clinical background for either one. Teachers, coaches, faith leaders, HR managers, hockey parents (the list is usually that ordinary) — most often the person who ends up helping is simply the person who was there and noticed the warning signs.

Where to find help in York Region and South Simcoe

An awareness day becomes more impactful if it ends somewhere concrete. So here is the concrete part.

Right now, in a crisis. Call or text 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, any hour of any day. Locally, the Community Crisis Response Service answers at 1-855-310-COPE (2673), also 24/7. In an emergency, call 9-1-1. It is worth knowing how accessible this has become: 9-8-8 has answered more than one million calls and texts since it launched in November 2023. Whatever reaching out feels like in the moment, you are not alone.

When it is not a crisis, but it is not nothing either. Through the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program we offer free, evidence-based therapy for Ontario residents 18 and up living with depression or anxiety. You refer yourself. No doctor’s referral, no family doctor required, no cost.

For young people. MOBYSS, the mobile walk-in clinic for ages 12 to 25, is the first of its kind in Ontario. You do not need a health card and you do not need a referral. You walk up. Right now, we are offering virtual counselling support to connect with a Youth Mental Health Worker for support around a variety of mental health needs.

For teens 15-17 years old, you can sign up for the free and confidential BounceBack Ontario Program.

If you have already lost someone. Grief after a suicide has its own shape, and working it out alone is the hardest way to do it. We have written about what that grief can look like and where to turn, including the bereavement support that partner agencies offer in this region.

For the people holding someone else up. We run education and support groups for families and caregivers, because the person doing the worrying usually needs somewhere to set that worry down too.

How we’re marking the day this September

Three days after World Suicide Prevention Day, on Sunday, September 13, our community walks.

Mental Health in Motion is a free, family-friendly 5 km walk along the Tom Taylor Trail, starting from AOK Park at 535 Timothy Street in Newmarket. The event runs from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and the walk itself steps off at 10:00. The trail is fully accessible to wheelchairs and strollers, and registration is required.

New this year: Steps for Stories. Participants can dedicate a sign along the route to honour a loved one or share a message of hope, so that the walk passes through a memory pathway built by the people walking it. For anyone who has lost somebody, seeing that name out in the open on a September morning, in public, among people who understand, is not a small thing.

What your support pays for on the ground

Through September we are working to raise money for people across York Region and South Simcoe.

That money is not abstract. It funds the suicide prevention training described above, so more people in this region know what to do when someone finally says something. It funds caregiver education and the support groups that go with it. It keeps services open and free for youth and adults who could not otherwise pay for them. Rick believes support from the community helps make all of that possible.

Make a gift and help make sure the next person who works up the nerve to speak is met with understanding rather than silence.

Whatever you do with September 10 (walk, give, take a training workshop, or simply ask one person how they are really doing and then stay for the answer) the point of it is the same. Silence is what leaves people alone with it. Any attempt at conversation is better than no conversation at all.

This page offers general information and is not clinical advice. If you are concerned about yourself or someone else, please speak with a health care provider or contact one of the services listed above.