ISBY or I’ll Stand By You is a phone app that aims to help individuals to promote positive mental health and well-being for themselves and others.
If you have a friend or family member who has periods of distress, sadness or low moods the message of ISBY is that there are people who care and with support they can find hope for the future. We all need to know that there are people who stand by us and care enough to help us through difficult times.
Mental health statistics tell us that 1 in 6 Australians will experience depression at some time in their lives. Depression brings with it feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, it has been described as a black cloud that creates an air of despondency and despair. For some people this despondency can lead to a feeling that life is not worth living and they experience suicidal ideation. The message that we all need to hear is that depression is an illness and with the right help depression can be treated and the depressed person will get well.
"The message of ISBY – I’ll Stand By You is an important message for people to hear when they are feeling low or when they are depressed."
So we would encourage you to send positive messages to your friends or family members especially if they are feeling depressed. You may like to use some of the messages in this app or you may like to suggest that they download this app to use as inspiration.
Letting people know that they are not alone and that there are people who care is an important part of mental health and well-being.
ISBY has been developed by the Hope for Life suicide prevention team. Our aim is to raise awareness within the broader community about the issues that may lead people to the point of suicidal ideation.
We want to help everyone to develop the skills to help each other. We offer short on-line courses at no cost, to help people to learn suicide prevention gatekeeper skills, so that they can be ready to support a friend or loved one. Three simple steps Question, Persuade, Refer, QPR will give you some basic skills in suicide prevention. Just like people who know CPR can help save lives, so too can people trained in QPR learn to know what to do to help someone in trouble. The course will take about an hour to complete, visit our www.isby.com to learn about QPR