A Super Idea

Superannuation is meant to assist people financially once they reach retirement, however two super funds have gone one step further to try and ensure its members make it to and through retirement.

Covering almost half a million Australians, the Motor Trades Superannuation Fund (MTAA Super) and Prime Super, as some of you may know, are both ardent supporters of LifeLine – the nationwide 24 hour telephone counselling service aimed at preventing suicide as well as offering a number of suicide prevention and emotional support programs.

According to LifeLine it receives a fresh call to its phone line every minute and on average answers more than 450,000 calls a year.

40% of these calls deal with issues of suicide or mental health.

The most recently released statistics by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in March 2007, revealed there were 2,101 registered deaths from suicide in 2005 and 2,098 in 2004.

The MTAA and Prime Super’s involvement with LifeLine was brought about after both funds identified an increase in their death benefit claim rates due to higher incidences of suicide among their members.

For the MTAA, a review of its statistical data indicated member suicide rates were above the national average for young males and females in the 15-24 and 25-34 age bracket.

Given Prime Super’s membership is primarily in rural and regional Australia it has been working with Lifeline to help address the high incidence of suicide in these parts of the country.

Both MTAA and Prime Super have active programs in place with LifeLine.

The focus of the campaigns are to raise awareness of mental health and help prevent instances of suicide among members and their families through depression and suicide awareness initiatives.

The MTAA runs a ‘readthesigns’ national suicide prevention program and Prime Super offers a series of tool kits courtesy of LifeLine.

The packs include: Beating the Blues, Helping Someone at Risk of Suicide and Getting Through the Drought’.

Meanwhile it seems a broader industry initiative in the area is in the pipeline with the Industry Funds Forum currently assessing ways to make such initiatives more widespread across the superannuation industry.