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World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10, 2009

Front Porch Coalition Hosts Local Suicide Awareness and Prevention Day Event

On September 10, 2009, the Front Porch Coalition will join groups and organizations worldwide to commemorate World Suicide Prevention Day, an annual event held on September 10th each year as an initiative of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). The theme in 2009 is "Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures." Begun in 2003, the purpose of World Suicide Prevention Day is to improve education about suicide, disseminate information, decrease stigmatization and, most importantly, raise awareness that suicide is preventable.
World Suicide Prevention Day 2009, "Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures" provides an opportunity to remind people that suicide is influenced by cultural, religious, legal, historical, philosophical and traditional factors and that these contexts need to be taken into account in considering suicide prevention. Suicide needs to be understood in terms of its cultural background, and, to save lives, suicide prevention programs need to be tailored to different cultural contexts.

According to the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), suicide is a leading cause of death for people worldwide, and one of the three leading causes of death for young people under 25. Every year, approximately one million people die by suicide - one death every two minutes - 3,000 people each day. The World Health Organization estimates that by the year 2020, this annual toll of suicide deaths will have risen to one and a half million, and suicide will represent 2.4% of the global burden of disease.

Suicide deaths account for more than half of all violent deaths in the world - more than all deaths from wars and homicides combined. Every year many millions more people make serious suicide attempts which while, they do not result in death, require medical treatment and mental health care, and reflect severe personal unhappiness or illness. Millions more people - the family members and close friends of those who die by suicide – are bereaved and affected by suicide each year, with the impact of this loss often lasting for a lifetime.

Suicide exacts huge psychological and social costs, and the economic costs of suicide to society (lost productivity, health and social care costs) are estimated at many billions of dollars each year. Because almost a quarter of suicides are teenagers and young adults aged less than 25 (250,000 suicides each year), suicide is a leading cause of premature death, accounting for more than 20 million years of healthy life lost.

In South Dakota, every three or four days in South Dakota, someone dies by suicide.  Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in South Dakota for people ages 15-34.  The suicide rates for youth and young adults in the state is approximately twice as high as it is in the nation overall, and the South Dakota suicide rate for 15-19 year-olds is two and a half times as high as it is nationally. Suicide is now the sixth leading cause of death in South Dakota.  During the past ten years, there has been a steady increase in the number of suicides in Pennington County, increasing from an average of one per month to nearly two per month during the past four years.  During the past three years, twelve of the suicide victims have been between the ages of 11 and 19 and seven between the ages of 20 and 26. 

On September 10th the Front Porch Coalition will host a local suicide awareness event at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota with the theme “Together There’s Hope.”  The event will coincide with Suicide Prevention Week which is held from September 6-12.  Educational awareness and prevention materials will be on display at the Dahl Arts Center during Suicide Prevention Week.  The September 10th event, which will be held from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm, is free and open to the public and everyone is encouraged to attend. While the primary focus of the event is to raise awareness of suicide, the organization will provide a history of what it has accomplished to date and what its goals are for the future.  It will also serve as a fundraising event for the organization as well, yet participating in the event does not require anyone to donate or raise money.  Please contact the Front Porch Coalition office for additional information or to RSVP for the event by calling 605-348-6692 or emailing inquiries@frontporchcoalition.org.   

Front Porch Coalition Continues to Provide Youth Suicide Prevention Training to Rapid City Schools

The Front Porch Coalition will continue its efforts to prevent youth suicides by again offering the school-based youth suicide prevention training to the schools in Rapid City who were unable to participate in October 2008.  With this training, all middle and high schools will receive this unique school-based youth suicide prevention training. The schools that were able to participate in October 2008 have already seen the improvements in their students’ help-seeking behaviors.  Peers who were trained to become peer leaders have brought youth who needed help to the adults who were trained to be adult advisors for this program. 

The developer and trainer of this youth suicide prevention program, Mr. Mark LoMurray will again be in Rapid City on September 16-17, 2009 to deliver a train-the-trainer training specific to school staff members who will become trainers of this program on an ongoing basis so that they can provide this training to new staff members and peers in future years. Then from October 26-30, 2009, the adult advisor and peer training will be brought to all schools in the community with those staff members participating in the train-the-trainer program to maximize their learning experience and enhance their abilities to become trainers for the program.  This will be vital to keeping this program effectively implemented on a long-term basis. 

If you are interested in becoming a community advisor for one of the Rapid City schools, please call the Front Porch Coalition at 605-348-6692 for additional information and to register for the trainings.  Community advisors can assist the adult advisors from schools in helping peers bring healthy messages to the youth in their schools, developing and coordinating public service announcements, and creating bulletin boards with those messages that the trained peer advisors will be trained to bring to the youth in their schools.
The organization is working to continue to secure the funding needed to bring this training to additional schools in the Black Hills region.  Please contact the Front Porch Coalition if you are interested in bringing this training to your school.  Please periodically check back for additional information about these and future trainings and any additional community awareness events, as the final details of these trainings are developed, including the times and locations of each of the trainings.

Free Support Group on Recovering from Suicide Grief

Thank you to the generous donations from some local businesses, the Front Porch Coalition is now able to offer free of charge to the people and suicide survivors in the Black Hills region the option to attend a support group facilitated by a professional clinician. This support group is unique in that it will bring more than just support to those who have lost someone to suicide. It will also provide people with an opportunity to learn how to cope with their grief and learn that what they are going through and may be dealing with is normal after loosing someone close to them to suicide.

The focus of the group is to understand suicide grief, learn the normal stages of grief specific to suicide, work through the grief process, and learn how to cope, heal, and recover from a loss to suicide. The support group will be facilitated by a licensed professional who will take participants through the grief process specific to suicide and provide education and resources on dealing will grief, loss, and healing. The emphasis of the support group is on education as opposed to counseling. Interested participants will be given referrals to other counseling and support resources in the community should they need any additional resources and assistance.

Pre-registration for the group session is required. Participation in the support group is voluntary but attendance at every meeting is encouraged since the support group will be closed to those who pre-register and will run for six consecutive weeks per session. The group will meet at Lutheran Social Services at 2920 Sheridan Lake Road in Rapid City from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 pm. The next group session is scheduled to start on Thursday, May 22, 2008. Please call the Front Porch Coalition at 348-6692 to register each person attending. Additional group sessions will be held throughout the year, as the program will be an ongoing service.

The support group is free of charge to those wishing to participate. Materials will be provided to each participant. Pre-registration is required since the group will be a closed group from beginning to end, so please contact the Front Porch Coalition at 605-348-6692, by email at: inquiries@frontporchcoalition.org, or by mail at: 915 Mountain View Road, Rapid City, SD 57702. Please RSVP containing your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number as contact information in the event any information needs to be sent to the participants, as well as the number of participants planning to attend with you.

Suicide Prevention Program: “Suicide Prevention Is Everybody’s Business”

Over the past few years, the local suicide rate has been steadily rising. In Pennington County, the number of suicide completions over the past five years has nearly doubled from one per month to nearly two per month. During the past three years, twelve of the suicide victims have been between the ages of 11 and 19 and six between the ages of 20 and 26. More than fifty percent of the suicide deaths in Pennington County over the past nine years have ages that range from 14 - 35 years old at the time of their death. As the local, state, and national rate of suicide completions increases, the need for effective suicide prevention programs in every community becomes essential. Even though mental health providers are trained to identify the immediate warning signs for suicide, everyone needs to know those warning signs. Many suicide victims were not receiving treatment prior to and at the time of their death. It is important that we educate people on how to identify those warning signs and teach them how to ensure that the suicidal person receives appropriate and immediate assistance in order to save their life.

One of the primary goals and most important projects that the Front Porch Coalition is working to develop and bring to community organizations and business in the Black Hills region is a suicide prevention program that everyone can use in their everyday lives. A number of presentations will be developed so that the information will be tailored to the specific community organization, gender group, age group, and other demographic backgrounds. Each presentation is intended to teach everyone how to identify suicide warning signs, determine if a person is at risk for suicide based on those warning signs, and teach that person how to refer and persuade the suicidal person to receive treatment from the appropriate mental health provider in their community. Yet the presentation will be tailored to meet the needs of the specific group targeted, i.e. school teachers and counselors, youth providers, nursing home providers, hospice providers, ministers, etc. The presentations will provide general information on suicide prevention and will be approximately one to two hours in length.

The organization continues to work on developing more in-depth training sessions for those groups who may need more detailed information and resources on various techniques on suicide prevention. The first of those training sessions is being implemented in the Rapid City Schools and is specifically address towards youth suicide prevention training in schools. Contact the Front Porch Coalition office or check the organization’s website for the latest news and updates for more information on this program.

Join in Public Awareness Anti-Stigma Campaign

The Front Porch Coalition has made it a strategic priority to implement a public awareness and anti-stigma campaign to reduce the negative stigma that still remains that prevents people from seeking professional help for mental health, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and support after loosing someone to suicide, with the goal of preventing suicide and improving the overall mental health and wellness of the community. Nationwide, approximately 90% of all suicide victims suffer from some form of mental health or substance abuse problem. Two-thirds of those did not receive any treatment at the time of their death. Of the average twenty suicides per year in Pennington County, nearly all of those victims were not receiving any mental health or substance abuse treatment in the days, weeks, or months preceding their death. Nearly all of those victims were using alcohol at the time of their death and/or were dealing with some form of mental illness or using and/or abusing alcohol or drugs. While every situation and suicide death has different circumstances, these alarming statistics have remained fairly stable over the years.

So in order to prevent suicide deaths from occurring and reducing the number of suicide attempts that our community has endured over the past few months and even years, it is our priority to implement this anti-stigma and public awareness campaign. In order to do this and implement a full-scale campaign meeting the needs and concerns of the entire community and all of its mental health and substance abuse providers, we are asking for the assistance of those providers in preparing to implement this campaign as well as bringing it to the Black Hills communities. We will also need assistance in raising the funding in order to carry out this campaign. While we will be pursuing various sources of funding, we will need the assistance of a number of community providers, organizations, and even local businesses in order to raise enough funding to implement this project. Please contact me if you are interested in and able to assist us, regardless of how you can be of assistance. Together we can work to raise awareness and reduce the incidence of suicide and get people the help that they need in order to improve and maintain their mental health and wellness.

This page is updated periodically with the latest news and events from within the organization, including the events we are hosting within the community. Check back in the future for the most recent news and upcoming events. (Updated) 8/25/2009