Third spaces that keep Suicide Prevention alive

Bernadette Soriano

It is not merely a pause in awareness. It is the  base of intervention.

September’s signal, and the numbers beneath the ribbon

Each September, the ribbons resurface and the declarations swell: Suicide Prevention Month has arrived, a global reminder to dismantle stigma, to widen awareness, to extend the reach of lifelines. Yet the statistics do not bend as easily as the slogans.

In the United States, for every young life lost to suicide, there may be 100 to 200 attempts. Almost half (45%) of those who died had spoken to a primary care provider in the month before their death, but only one in five  (20%) had reached a mental health professional.

The Philippines tells a parallel, and no less somber story. According to a WHO-backed school-based health survey, 16.8 % of students aged 13–17 had attempted suicide in the preceding year. National data puts the suicide mortality rate at 2.5 per 100,000 in 2019, rising to 3.49 per 100,000 in 2021.

The pandemic deepened the crisis: suicide deaths climbed 25.7% in 2020, reaching 3,529 cases, while suicide-related hotline calls to NCMH surged, peaking at 1,115 calls in June. From January to October 2020, an average of 44 suicide deaths per month were recorded most poignantly, 58% involved youth under 30.

Even as distress grew, literacy lagged. A study of Filipino adults during the pandemic found only moderate overall mental health literacy, with particularly marginal understanding of risk factors and mental health influences.

Here is the unspoken paradox: contact occurs, but connection does not. And in the distance between the two lies the work that third spaces can quietly begin to do.

Third spaces as the bedrock of belonging

Ray Oldenburg once named them “third places”—neither home nor office, but thresholds of presence: a café table that refuses to rush you, a park that asks for nothing, a library corner hushed into belonging, or even a Discord server humming past midnight.

What instinct whispers, research now confirms: these places restore rather than distract. In Japan, the practice of shinrin-yoku—forest bathing—demonstrated that 15 minutes of sitting or walking among trees lowered salivary cortisol by 12–15% compared to time spent in city streets. Group walks amplified the effect: a 22% drop in cortisol, a 16% decline in stress, and a 14% rise in positive mood.

The pattern is sharper where disadvantage is deepest. In low-income neighborhoods of Scotland, nearby green space reshaped cortisol rhythms and relieved stress, particularly among women. Even brief exposures ripple outward: the Urban Mind project at King’s College London found that hearing birdsong, glimpsing trees, or tending to a single plant reduced loneliness by 28%, cut depression risk by a fifth, and sharpened cognitive focus for hours afterward.

Nor is the effect limited to nature. Among university students in Southern California, cafés and coffee shops offered the same kind of psychological restoration as urban parks: spaces for quiet rest, emotional release, and a sense of belonging. In Tokyo, the absence of such places proved costly. 

Adolescents without a third place were 1.75 times more likely to report low self-esteem—a precursor to suicidal ideation. When compounded by the absence of a guiding adult, that risk more than tripled.

The conclusion resists ornament yet feels urgent: third places and natural contact are not indulgences but lifelines. A bench after school, a café that welcomes lingering, a shared garden plot. Each recalibrates the body’s stress biology, softens isolation, and sustains the fragile roots of self-esteem.

Beyond the month, into the fabric of risk

Suicide Prevention Month may serve as the flare that signals urgency, but third spaces, the everyday base of belonging, are what sustain survival. Their necessity is clearest not abstractly, but in how they cradle those already navigating greater risk.

Among LGBTQIA+ youth, the numbers demand recognition: nearly 39% experience depression, 57% anxiety, 26% seriously contemplate suicide, and 6% have attempted it. Yet studies consistently show that affirming environments—places where identity is not just tolerated but welcomed, lighten that burden, transforming vulnerability into resilience.

In the Philippine context, these sanctuaries often look different but function just the same. Consider the barangay hall, traditionally the local community’s anchor: hosting medical missions, fiestas, childcare services, and spirited games in adjacent multipurpose courts. These halls, when animated with inclusive activity, become more than administrative hubs; they are communal hearths where belonging is practiced, not preached.

Thoughtfully planned green spaces offer similar refuge. A 2022 study in Davao City found that access and use of public parks, especially those designed with natural, spacious, and child- or PWD-friendly features, contributed meaningfully to residents’ physical and mental well-being. And among contact center workers, caught in Manila’s high-stress urban churn, awareness of urban green spaces nearby was a significant predictor of stress levels, second only to household income and personal resilience.

Even universities stand out as living examples. At UP Diliman, generous tree-lined avenues, the Sunken Garden where one can nap under a raintree, and the quiet expanse of the Academic Oval all offer respite from the city’s psychic weight—a kind of breathing space that scholars argue is integral to mental health.

Whether it’s lingering in a barangay hall after a community game, strolling beneath acacias at a local plaza, or finding solace in a campus grove, these third spaces do more than stand still as they hold space for unscripted belonging. They are lifelines camouflaged as ordinary environments, capable of catching the tremors of despair and turning them structurally into presence.

From symbol to foundation

The task, then, is to transform awareness into framework. To treat third spaces not as luxuries, but as necessities.

• Keep them open and accessible: libraries, cafés, community centers, parks a.k.a everyday sites where connection can begin without appointment or prescription.
• Seed them with peer-led initiatives. Hope Squad, a school-based program that trains students to recognize warning signs and guide peers to help, has been shown to cut stigma and increase help-seeking.
• Bridge informal and formal care. Equip volunteers, baristas, librarians, or club leaders with mental health first-aid training, so casual encounters may segue into critical interventions.
• Safeguard affirming spaces for the marginalized. Inclusion here is not an aesthetic; it is a prophylactic against despair.

The lifeline hidden in the everyday

Campaigns can ignite empathy, but only environments sustain it. Suicide prevention does not end with awareness drives or clinical corridors; it lingers in the unnoticed crevices of the everyday.

A library table where silence is not loneliness but reprieve. A basketball court at dusk where camaraderie eclipses isolation. A community hall where one can arrive without pretext. A pixelated landscape where the avatar finally mirrors the self.

Despair may not dissolve outright, but it often shifts—into dialogue, into witness, into survival.