S1E3: Akash Asif: Helping guys to buddy up as way to prevent men’s suicide

PsychSessions: Conversations about Teaching N' Stuff

Akash Asif is the director of operations and strategy for the Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Akash’s journey into suicide prevention work began when he suddenly lost a colleague to suicide. This experience opened his eyes to the number of people in his life experiencing mental health concerns, especially suicidality.

Akash was intimately involved in the development of CSP’s Buddy Up campaign. Buddy Up is a program specifically designed to help men have genuine conversations about their lives which then allows them to connect and provide support for each other. Our conversation was a great opportunity to “look under the hood” of Buddy Up by allowing Akash to help us understand the development of the title Buddy Up, the decisions around the artwork that is core to the program, and why they integrated certain tools (air fresheners and hard hat stickers) into Buddy Up. We also talked about help-seeking versus help-giving and why these terms are important when thinking about designing an intervention for certain guys.

Akash also described some current developments in Buddy Up and why he is excited about the future of the program.