SUICIDE PREVENTION IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS
The man was a Korean War veteran and had the Silver Star and Purple Heart to prove it. But lately he felt less like a hero and more like a burden to those around him. His wife of 56 years had recently passed away. Because he had fallen a couple of times and had needed an ambulance ride to the hospital each time, his children, living hundreds of miles away, were pressuring him to give up his home, his car and his beloved companion, a black lab and move into assisted living.
The teenager had worked hard and had tried hard. He had seen the disappointment in his dad’s eyes when he had to tell him that he had not made the school’s basketball team. It had been a tough couple of months since he had wrecked his car, been cut from the team and now his steady girlfriends had decided to go to the prom with someone else. How much is one guy supposed to deal with? Alcohol was seemingly the only thing that brought him a respite from his perception of being a failure as a teenager.
The man’s company was following the national trend of downsizing. The problem wasn’t the economy it was ‘dot com’. People were not shopping brick and mortar stores anymore, the convenience and competition of ‘dot com’ internet businesses were forcing companies to lay off thousands of men and women in the workforce. His lay-off was like a cue for the family car to break down, one of his children to get sick and need expensive medical care. Besides his paycheck he had lost his health insurance coverage when he was laid off. All that was left was a life insurance policy defining that the man was worth more to his family dead than alive.
All three of these people are as different from each other as night and day. But they are related in that all had decided separately and individually that their death, by suicide, was the best and only solution to their pain. They each used a different method to complete their death but all had been powered by alcohol. Additionally, they had all communicated their despair and hopelessness, either in word or behavior before making their first (and in one case his third) attempt at suicide.
Suicide is almost always an interpersonal act in which suicidal communications occur between two or more people who already know each other. Further, research has shown that people increase the rate of their suicidal communications in the days preceding a suicidal attempt. Approximately 90% of the people who go on to kill themselves communicate their suicidal intentions to someone around them in the days and weeks before their death. Suicide prevention happens when people begin to recognize these suicidal communications and respond positively to them.
Idaho, especially north Idaho, has a very high suicide rate in most categories including elderly, Veterans and teenagers. Nationwide we lose an average of 125 people EVERY DAY to suicide, including 22 Veterans. Yet, research tells us that suicide is the most preventable of deaths.
QPR is a Spokane based institute dedicated to the training of individuals to recognize people with suicidal ideations, respond favorably to them by persuading those people in distress to seek out counselors and other helpful agents to help individuals weather the storms of life. Who would benefit from the presentation?
• Anyone with a friend or relative that is in crisis. Remember that a crisis is defined by that friend or relative’s perception of it.
• Every parent with a child in the competitive world of academics and sports.
• Every friend or family member of a Veteran suffering from PTSD
• Every friend or family member of a person suffering with mental illness
• Every friend or family member of a friend or relative struggling with alcohol or drug dependency.
That training will be held in Bonners Ferry on July 12th at 6PM at the Trinity Lutheran Church, 6784 Cody Street. The presentation last approximately an hour and a half. The class is free. No reservation is required to attend. For more information contact
Gini Woodward at 208-304-7306 or m.andg.woodward@frontier.com
Learn QPR and save lives.