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Suicide Awareness is not exclusive to September

By Suzanne Walker posted 09-18-2016 22:27

  

Good Evening AMHCA Colleagues - 

With September half over, we move into the fall season filled with celebrations - a new school year, football, soccer, the World series and holidays. The seasons remind us of constant change in our lives. Sometimes, the life, its unending barrage of stressors, leads to an internal struggle too overwhelming for people to bear. We live in a world where we casually ask: "How are you?" when we greet someone never really intending to find out. We all know this is intended to be a cursory greeting, rarely meant to yield to deep meaningful conversation or responses. Our days are busy and our contacts often limited to more surface level perfunctory interchanges. For many with ongoing sadness, depression, loss, trauma, etc., they may avoid burdening anyone with their own struggles and simply respond with "Fine. How are you?".

September is Suicide Awareness Month. My family still deals with the death of a very loved cousin by suicide 15+ years ago. To this day, we still mourn our loss and wonder why, what could have do have done to prevent and how we didn't see "the signs". 

Did you know? (cite - www.afsp.org) :

  • Suicide is the 10 thleading cause of death in the US
  • Each year 42,773 Americans die by suicide
  • For every suicide, 25 attempt (*Please take note of this stat - we can prevent suicide)
  • Suicide costs the US $44 Billion annually

 There is a great deal of resources out there, which we need to have at our finger tips as clinical mental health counselors. Here are a few: 

  • The Suicide Prevention Resource Center - http://www.sprc.org/
  • The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.
  • A resource for clinicians is the Clinician Survivor Task Force - http://mypage.iu.edu/~jmcintos/basicinfo.htm.
  • The VA - #BeThere - http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/
  • The American Association of Suicidology  - www.suicidology.org
  • Dr. Thomas Joiner spoke at our 40th AMHCA Anniversary Conference in New Orleans highlighting his work on the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide - http://www.workingminds.org/model.html

Suicide can be prevented. It is not a fact of life we just simply resign ourselves to accept. Do you use a Safety Plan Template with the people you serve? Do you regularly review and update it? SPRC provides a sample form (a pdf file free access) which the VA also uses  - http://www.sprc.org/sites/default/files/Brown_StanleySafetyPlanTemplate.pdf

As clinical mental health counselors working in the U.S and its' Public Health Model, our task and purpose with Suicide is to be primary interventionists. Primary Interventionists prevent the onset of disease; it aims to reduce the incidence of disease. It involves interventions that are applied before there is any evidence of disease or injury. Please become more aware and informed about Suicide Prevention for those you love, those you serve and for your practice. http://zerosuicide.sprc.org/toolkit

And a quick AMHCA JMH listing of articles on Suicide for you to review:    https://www.google.com/search?q=journal+of+mental+health+counseling+and+suicide&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS702US703&oq=journal+of+mental+health+counseling+and+suicide&aqs=chrome..69i57.8875j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

My best regards - 

Suzanne

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