‘I’m scared someone else will lose their child this way’: the alarming rise in First Nations suicide

Indigenous woman Ashleigh-Sue Chatters took her own life in Dandenong hospital’s psychiatric unit. Photograph: Supplied

Ashleigh-Sue Chatters was sketching designs for her butterfly tattoo in the weeks before her death.

Having struggled with mental illness since her teenage years, the 28-year-old Palawa woman told her mother the delicate insect planned for her upper arm was an ode to her will to live.