Onebright

We help individuals and employers navigate the maze of mental health and wellbeing solutions available, to improve their mental health. We work across the mental health continuum from early intervention, prevention, and therapy treatment.

Onebright has been providing clinical excellence in mental health across the UK for 30 years. It is a pioneer in clinical assessments and treatment, delivering services to more than 55,000 people per year.

We connect individuals with outstanding Cognitive Behavioural Therapists, providing every person with the best mental healthcare. We believe that everyone should have access to the right mental health treatment, wherever and however they need it.

Our services include CBT, psychiatry and counselling.

How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it?

At Onebright, we treat children, adolescents and adults with mental health problems. In 2023, we received 55,000 referrals; about 8 out of 10 people we helped meet a diagnostic threshold for a mental health disorder. With increasing demand, we are projecting to grow yearly. Consistently, 22% of our referrals across referral sectors (private medical insurance, corporate, statutory organisations, self-referrals, etc.) identify as having thoughts of ending their own life (at the time of referral). Frequently, these are individuals who struggle to access NHS services. We have a robust risk assessment process and design individualised clinically appropriate risk management plans. Occasionally, we need to manage people with active risk with onward referrals, but primarily, our expert professionals work collaboratively with our clients to overcome their risk and treat any underlying mental health disorders.

What are your current priorities?

We are a growing business. As we expand into new areas, we must meet the needs of existing referral sources while maintaining safety, effectiveness, and quality. To address this, we have a newly formed Suicide Prevention Committee. The committee aims to review, update, and implement our Suicide Prevention Strategy with current best practices. Joining the NSPA, and encouraging our referring partners to do the same, is our priority to embed best practice in our service. We are proud of the work we do today, but we require multiple mechanisms to future-proof our suicide prevention strategy.

What challenges are you currently facing?

Suicide is a rare occurrence in our service, which is exceptionally low. However, we are vigilant and make sure everyone’s safety is our priority. We actively work with our partner organisations to help identify people and groups at risk and how to nudge and direct people towards the help they need.

There is never a good story when someone is thinking of ending their life; when somebody does, the story is always worse for others.  We have a solid process to notify and set serious incident reviews in motion and we robustly examine the root causes to find new learning.  Working within a no-blame culture, we believe that every suicide is preventable. At every review of a serious incident, our values trigger a period of self-reflection; sometimes, this is an emotionally complex process.  Our work exposes more of our teams to all the issues around suicide.

Our primary aim is safety and supporting those who are seeking help.  Our continuous challenge is to support our staff affected by suicide, from the work we do or our own personal experience. At the same time, we have to recognise that adverse emotional reactions to suicide are appropriate and natural responses to sad and distressing events. 

Supporting people, identifying who needs support and providing help is always going to be dynamic and specific as we continuously learn from each event.