Overcomers

The Statewide Suicide Prevention Council has a member who shares her experience with attempting suicide. Thankfully, she survived her attempts and has made involvement in suicide prevention a part of her healing. In the language of suicide prevention, she is an “attempter.”  But she calls herself an “overcomer.”

Previously I’ve posted on the power of language in our work, and how important it is to use empowering and inclusive language. So I love (LOVE!) the idea of considering people who have survived an attempt to commit suicide as “overcomers.” Overcoming despair, overcoming hopelessness, overcoming depression, overcoming suicide – whether it’s for a day, a month, or a year –   is an achievement we should support and celebrate.

The data shows that someone who attempts suicide is more likely to attempt suicide again within the next 6-12 months. In Alaska, 819 people attempted suicide in 2007 and 149 people died by suicide. We focus on the lives we’ve lost, and the grief we feel over those losses – but shouldn’t we also celebrate and support the 670 people that lived?

What prevents us from supporting and caring for someone who has attempted suicide?

Are we afraid that if we talk about it, they will try again? (That’s just not true – research shows that talking with someone about their feelings of suicide and how to find help actually can prevent suicide.)

Are we afraid it might be our fault? (We can’t assume responsibility for the feelings of suicide experienced by someone else. We can take responsibility for helping, or choosing not to help, someone in crisis.)

Are we afraid we don’t know what to say? (You can find something to say. You can seek out training, like Mental Health First Aid or ASIST, to learn how to listen and what to say. Or, you can simply say “Your life matters to me.”)

If we acknowledge our own fears, and recognize that those fears are unfounded, we can then be brave and open our hearts to someone who needs support and love in their journey of overcoming.

A Quilt Made in Honor of Loved Ones Lost to Suicide

Listen, Learn, Love and Live

Today, at the American Association for Suicidology conference, I heard from people who have attempted suicide about their experiences and how folks can best support the journey of recovery. The advice they gave on how to support someone who has attempted suicide was to “listen, learn, love and live.”

Listen

Too often we are busy thinking about what we want to say, rather than listening. But listening is one of the best things you can do for someone who has attempted suicide. In your listening, be honest and open with them and with yourself. Part of that is, if you say “you can call me anytime,” make sure your phone is on and you’re able to be there any time.

Learn

Learn what helps the person by listening and asking them “how can I help?” Then, support them in the way(s) that best help them. Learn what services and supports are available in your community so you can encourage the person to seek help and support (and you can seek help and support for yourself if you need it).

Love

The panelists who had attempted suicide shared the value of love in supporting someone who is at risk. Their advice: express care and concern for the person who has attempted suicide. Be brave and confront stigma and your own misunderstandings about suicide (part of that learning aspect). Take care of yourself, too. Know your own limitations and honor them – don’t take on more than you can handle emotionally or mentally.

Live

This was a surprising point made by the panelists, who warned against making supporting someone who has attempted suicide the central part of your life. It’s understandable that we would want to make the safety and health of someone we love the most important thing in our lives – but that turns out not to be helpful to the person who has attempted suicide. Living and sharing our own lives is an important way of supporting someone who has attempted suicide.

We can support a friend or loved one after an attempt. We can help them on their journey of recovery, if we are brave and honest in our efforts.

And if you are someone who has attempted suicide, know that you are courageous and strong. And on days when you feel hopeless and alone, know that there are people – many of whom have walked the same road you are on — who want to support and care for you.

Your life matters.

If you are interested in finding or providing support for yourself or someone who has attempted suicide, there are some resources available. While there are not formal support groups for attempt survivors in Alaska, the Peer Support Consortium can help you find a peer support organization in your community. NAMI has chapters in communities in Alaska. If you know about other resources, or are interested in developing supports in your community, email kate.burkhart@alaska.gov.

The Power of Language

During a meeting this week with primary care and suicide prevention experts from across the country, the topic of language came up. The field of suicide prevention has its own language, its own “terms of art.” How that language is used can exclude the very people we’re trying to engage in this work.

Interestingly enough, the same topic came up in several of this week’s discussions related to updating Alaska’s state suicide prevention plan. There was concern that the language we use in our planning and prevention work might be confusing or even off-putting to the very people we want to engage.

In suicide prevention, a “survivor” is someone who has lost a loved one to suicide. A person who survives an attempt to commit suicide is referred to as an “attempter.” So, in order for there to be a survivor, someone has to die. That just doesn’t make sense.

Suicide prevention is broken into three categories: prevention – intervention – postvention. When I started this work, I wondered “what the heck is postvention?” I learned it’s a label created for how we respond after a suicide to prevent the domino effect often seen after someone dies by suicide.  If the point is to prevent additional suicides, why isn’t it just “prevention?”

This laguage issue is a possible barrier to bringing primary care providers into the suicide prevention effort. Suicide prevention focuses on preventing death in a time of crisis – kind of like the way emergency rooms treat people.  This focus on the end, and the emergency nature of the end, of the spectrum has made it hard to get primary care providers involved in this work. Their job is to diagnose and manage diseases, not do triage and emergency medicine. So why would they focus on what are thought to be exclsuively mental health emergencies?

Maybe if we explained that suicide responds to the same protocols and interventions as other chronic diseases, that would make more sense. You wouldn’t treat hypertension without checking (and rechecking) a patient’s blood pressure. You wouldn’t treat hypertension without explaining to the patient what he can do to help lower his blood pressure. And you wouldn’t treat hypertension without connecting the patient to the services and supports he needs to improve his condition. All those things – screening, patient education, referrals  — work to help someone early on to prevent the crisis that can lead to suicide.

There is a movement to help people stay healthier so they avoid the health conditions that can end up in the emergency room (heart attacks, strokes, etc.), Shouldn’t suicide prevention include a similar focus, helping people stay mentally and emotionally healthy so they don’t end up in that place where they are considering suicide and need emergency services?  And shouldn’t we use common language?

Maybe we need to think about how we talk about suicide, and find ways to use empowering and common sense language in this work? If so, how would we do that?

What is Suicidology?

The field of suicide prevention has some terms of art that sound like they are just plain made up. Like “suicidology” and “postvention.” Yet those weird-o words mean something really important when it comes to saving lives at risk of loss to suicide. I’m learning that this week.

So, what is “suicidology?” It’s a term for the research and study of suicide and suicide prevention. Many people see it as an area of study that crosses many disciplines, rather than being narrowly focused on psychology or psychiatry. The  American Association of Suicidology is a national organization of researchers, suicide prevention professionals, survivors of suicide and others committed to furthering research and evidence based prevention strategies.

I am honored to have been invited by the American Association of Suicidology to not only present at their annual conference in Portland, but to work with a rock star group of experts tomorrow to problem solve the integration of suicide prevention in primary care. This is especially exciting for me, given the work the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, and the Boards have put in to developing a pilot project in Alaska.

The Suicide Prevention Resource Center has developed a primary care suicide prevention toolkit to help physicians and community health providers screen and respond to patients at-risk for suicide. (This is the tool I’m hoping we can pilot in Alaska.) The National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners will soon have a new online resource for pediatric nurse practitioners (I got to meet the creator, Dr. Ginger Biddle tonight at dinner). These are just two examples of efforts to help family practitioners, nurses, optometrists, dentists, and other primary care providers serve as a resource for early identification of suicide risk and better intervention to save lives.

I’ll be blogging about AAS and everything I learn this week, so please check back and share your thoughts and ideas. Together, we can all act to prevent suicide in Alaska.