David Lui, of Auckland, a Pacific Island health and social issues consultant, was in Dunedin yesterday, heading a Pacific suicide prevention workshop for the Southern District Health Board.
Mr Lui said he supported Chief Coroner Judge Neil MacLean's move to providing suicide statistics in a timely manner, rather than waiting a couple of years for confirmed data.
Judge MacLean's stated aim is to bring suicide out of the shadows.
"The strategy of not talking about it obviously hasn't worked . . . it needs to be more discussed,'' Mr Lui said.
This meant media coverage and more talk in the community generally.
More needed to be discovered about people's reasons for ending their lives. There was no need to focus on methods, Mr Lui said.
There were signs before a suicide, and more awareness meant these were easier to spot.
Mr Lui said suicide numbers in the Pacific Island community had been reasonably stable in recent years.
In the 2011-12 provisional figures released last week, 31 of the 547 suicides were Pacific Islanders (2009-10, 31 suicides; 2010-11, 22).
Pacific people had a higher incidence of mental health issues than other groups, and were more likely to live in poverty.
Dealing with problems like inadequate housing, and family violence, were part of addressing the problem, along with targeted prevention and intervention programmes.
Judge MacLean said when contacted yesterday he was starting to see more media coverage about suicide, as part of the new approach.
Most journalists were acutely aware of the ethical responsibility to provide sensitive coverage, he said.
He was talking to New Zealand's coroners about releasing more detail and comment around suicide, although ultimately, findings were a matter for individual coroners.
He acknowledged his move to open up the topic upset some in academia, some of whom feared more talk on suicide was the wrong approach.
