With this weekend’s launch of the Baton Of Hope charity march around the UK starting in Glasgow in order to highlight the fact that suicide is the major killer of young adults in the UK, and the need for support and prevention for those suffering mental health crisis leading to suicidal thoughts; the organisation’s website provides information and highlights the stories of the relatives and survivors of suicide.
One such story is that of a cyber security specialist who lost her brother to suicide and how she went on to invent a Suicide Prevention Tool called Ripple.
Ripple exists to provide people with a voice, choice, empowerment and control at a time when they are most vulnerable.
The Ripple tool is a browser extension that provides mental health resources to people who are searching for harmful online content relating to self-harm or suicide on the Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Baidu, Yandex and Ask.com search engines.
The tool is available to be installed by an individual or integrated on mass within an organisation to provide an additional layer of mental health support for your people.
The tool pops up over the search results when a search for a harmful keyword or phrase is conducted. This ensures that anyone experiencing a crisis or struggling with their mental health are provided with a message of hope and an opportunity to gain mental health support and resources in their locality (currently the UK only) that they can call upon for immediate support.
Ripple provides people with a choice of mental health resources that work best for them, including 24/7 services over the telephone, text, webchat and mobile apps.
To test the tool, simply type "ripple test" into your search bar.
The Baton For Hope website explains how the suicide prevention toll was came into being as an invention by Alice Hendy:
In November 2020, Alice’s younger brother, Josh, took his life – he was just 21. Alice had a career as a cyber security specialist and it didn’t take her long to be able to access Josh’s computer. What she found horrified her!
Alice discovered that her brother had been researching suicide techniques via harmful internet searches. He ultimately used one of these search results to take his own life.
The more Alice researched, the more she discovered how easy it is for someone to find ways to end their life when searching the main internet search engines such as Google and Safari. With only a Samaritans helpline telephone number appearing at the top of a page full of search results, Alice decided something had to change.
In December 2020, having met with senior people from Google, Samaritans and other high-profile organisations, Alice launched Ripple – an online interceptive tool designed to ensure that more help and support is provided to individuals who are conducting searches relating to self-harm or suicide.
Alice’s appearances on mainstream media, and her work with the UK Government and other public bodies, has helped open up the conversation about suicide. Importantly, it has also provided families, schools, workplaces and other groups, with a safeguarding tool which interrupts someone in crisis, providing messages of hope and signposting appropriate support services.
You can access the Ripple Tool website here and register and then download the web browser extension for the browser used by the person you wish to help prevent searching for ways of killing themselves.
Source: Ripple / Baton Of Hope / Twitter / Unionsafety
