LITTLE ROCK — An upcoming community discussion on suicide prevention will focus on the warning signs of suicide and what to do - and what not to do - when encountering someone who may be suicidal.
The free event, “Suicide Prevention: Everyone Has a Role,” starts with a dinner at 5 p.m. Thursday in the parish hall at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. The audience will include area educators, service providers and social-work students from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said Michael Collie, clinical assistant professor in the UA’s School of Social Work.
The name of the forum is fitting, Collie said.
“As a community, that’s how we help each other have something to lean on. And it’s not just professionals,” he said. “It’s anybody. A kind word from someone can change a person’s whole direction.
If there’s anything participants should learn from the event, it’s to “err on the side of caution,” he added. “That’s the whole theme.
“We’re going to give people information and help them understand that suicide is a huge issue, especially for teenagers, as well as kids,” he said.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among Americans ages 15-24, behind accidents and homicide. Suicide rates among young people ages 10-14 increased 50 percent between 1981 and 2005.
Collie’s research and his work with students have taught him that younger people have difficulty believing there’s light at the end of the tunnel when they have problems.
“At some point, they lose hope, and they don’t see that things could change,” he said.
HOLIDAYS NO ISSUE
The timing of the community forum, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is purely coincidental, Collie said. Contrary to popular belief, he said, the number of suicides does not increase around the holidays.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics shows that the suicide rate is lowest in December. It actually peaks in the spring and fall.
Regardless, suicide remains a major public health concern throughout the year, according to information posted on the CDC’s website. It’s the 10th leading cause of death for all Americans, with more than 36,000 deaths annually. In addition, more than 374,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for self-inflicted injuries.
Collie will address some of the warning signs that someone might be considering suicide, such as threats or talk of suicide or talk of self-inflicted pain; seeking access to firearms, pills or other means of suicide; and/or talking or writing about death, dying or suicide.
Another myth about suicide is that those who take their own life suffer have a mental health issue.
“Plenty of people who have no mental health issues at all, who may have gone through some major grief issue or lost their boyfriend or girlfriend ... they don’t see that there’s a future,” Collie said.
Collie will present after dinner, and the evening will close with a panel discussion about issues tied to suicide in Northwest Arkansas. In addition to Collie,the panel includes Jared Sparks, director of clinical practices at Ozark Guidance; Carol Jackson, coordinator of the veterans justice outreach program at Veterans Healthcare System of the Ozarks; Julie Moore, program manager for the Arkansas Crisis Center; and Fayetteville Police detective Dave Williams.
‘IT’S SCARY’
Funding for the event comes from student fees allocated by the Associated Student Government at UA. The forum is co-sponsored by several School of Social Work student organizations: the Phi-Alpha Honor Society, UA chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the Social Work Action Group.
Mary Katherine McKinley, vice president of UA’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, stressed the importance of learning to assess whether a person is truly at risk of suicide and knowing what to do or say.
“A lot of times with suicide, even those that are trained in it, they don’t really know what to say,” McKinley said. “It’s scary.”
The cause is personal for McKinley, whose mother committed suicide.
“I believe it’s extremely important, not just for the person that is thinking about suicide, attempting suicide, but also for the family members that are left behind, as I was,” she said.
McKinley said it took her seven years to come to terms with her mother’s death.
“Somehow through all that I found my passion in social work ... that I really wanted to help people, that I could use my story and turn something really devastating into something really positive and really good and help other people.”
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 11/23/2012