“I don’t think being a Salford hero means having everything sorted,” says Dennis Baldwin, as he recalls his inspirational journey in providing hope for people where all seems lost.
After coming to Salford from Australia on what was supposed to be a stop-off on an around-the-world trip, nobody showed Dennis Baldwin where the airport was. And 25 years later, Salford has become home for him: a place where his professional life, lived experience and connection with the community have all intertwined.
For years, Dennis has stood alongside the people of Salford in their darkest moments – from sitting with those who feel forgotten, listening to those who believe they are a burden, to holding space for families whose lives have been torn apart by suicide. He understands pain not from theory, but from having lived it.
Dennis explains: “I have experienced anxiety, depression and multiple suicide attempts, and unfortunately, I’ve found myself experiencing suicidality again – I am currently recovering after a mental health crisis. I’m quite uncomfortable with the word ‘hero’ because I don’t particularly see myself that way. I’m somebody who’s struggled enormously, and I’m still struggling in some respects.
“If the recognition gives the work a bigger platform and means one more person feels able to say, ‘I’m struggling’ or ‘I’m not okay,’ then that’s incredibly meaningful to me.”
That understanding has shaped one of the most impactful suicide prevention movements Salford has ever seen.
Led by Dennis himself, Reach Out: Start to End Suicide is a community suicide prevention programme built around a simple belief: suicide is preventable, and everyone has a role to play – it is a collection of different ways of getting people talking, connecting and supporting one another.
Just one part of this movement is the Surviving Suicide Peer Support Art Group, which has brought together people who have experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide – it uses creativity as another way of expressing difficult experiences, while giving people the opportunity to support others who understand because they have been through something similar.
Dennis says: “Mental health crises and bereavement can be incredibly isolating. When you’re struggling, you genuinely believe that nobody else understands. Suicidality is one of the many symptoms of my own mental illness – I’m still learning how to navigate it and understand how my mental health affects my day-to-day life and I’m moving into my second decade with this diagnosis.”
Having worked in the third sector and health settings for more than 20 years, Dennis’s work reaches people that others often struggle to engage. From construction workers – one of the highest-risk groups for suicide – to frontline professionals, bereaved families, and young people, Dennis meets people where they are and has embedded suicide prevention across the city.
Dennis says: “I’ve learned that recovery, for me, can only be as strong as the people I have in my corner. I’ve got some incredible people in mine, and their support has genuinely been lifesaving. From my GP to my therapists, to my support workers, my family and my friends: they have all been my heroes.
“Sometimes they haven’t needed to say anything profound or fix anything. They’ve just listened. They’ve stayed, and they’ve helped me see something beyond the moment I’m in.”
When asked what the response to his work means to him, Dennis has a very specific moment in mind – a woman who saw the World Suicide Prevention Day Vigil from a bus as it passed the lawn outside Salford Museum and Art Gallery. She thanked him because it had given her “permission to remember my uncle”, who had taken his own life, without shame or judgement, and to know she wasn’t alone.
Or the grandmother, who had lost her grandson to suicide, who told him that by carrying a flag in the procession that opens the WSPD commemorations, alongside others carrying flags in remembrance of loved ones they had lost, “I feel ten feet tall when I step out onto that road.”
Dennis says: “Those words have stayed with me; they tell me that what matters is permitting people to remember somebody they loved, saying that their grief matters and reminding them that they’re not alone.”
By helping move the conversation around suicide away from silence, Dennis strives to challenge the idea that suicide should be hidden away. People see the procession, the flags – they ask what they’re about, and conversations begin.
Dennis says: “Beyond all the accolades that I and my work have received, what matters most to me is the legacy of survival and the possibility that, along the way, I may have helped save a life or two.
“Knowing that someone may still be here because of something I said, something I did, or something my work has helped create – that means more to me than any award ever could. I have poured blood, sweat, tears, and an enormous part of myself into this work, and I can look back knowing that I have done everything I possibly could to make a difference.”
When asked how people around Salford can strengthen his message, Dennis has one thing to say: Reach Out.
Dreaming of a day when suicide is no longer the killer that it is today, Dennis’s hope is that his work becomes part of a legacy that future generations can build upon, and for the day when we can look back and find a note in a history book that simply says: “Today was the day humanity found a cure for suicide, with a one-hundred-percent survival rate.”
