September is suicide prevention month, and in honor of this month the club Extraordinary Teen Council has requested that counselor Cassie Stauch hold a Suicide Prevention training for teens. It stemmed from the Extraordinary Teen Council’s goal of improving teen mental health.
This particular training was conducted through a program called QPR, which stands for Question, Persuade, Refer. The goal of this program is to “Reduce suicidal behaviors and save lifes by providing innovative, practical, and proven suicide prevention training.” (qprinstitue.com)
“One of the cool things abt QPR is that it’s evidence based, so in the social work field,
things have to be proven effective and proven that they work to get more funding and support and be able to be pushed out wildly,” Stauch said.
Another benefit of using the QPR program for suicide prevention trainings is that they are typically much shorter then regular trainings. Most training like this can last anywhere from six to eight hours, but QPR training lasts only around two. Several members of ETC attended the training to gain knowledge, and further ETC’s cause.
“It just stems from my desire to be able to help people whenever I can, and to make sure I had the resources to be able to do that,” Senior Clara Streeter said.
During this training, students were taught a variety of skills. They discussed the myths and facts about suicide and went over statistics on the topic such as what populations are most effected by suicide and what does and does not cause suicide. Other things that they learned were the verbal, situational or emotional clues that suggest someone is struggling.
Approaching somebody to ask if they are having these thoughts can be challenging, and this meeting helped teach students how to find out if someone needs help and feel more comfortable asking them about it.
“It’s really hard and awkward to just pop out there and ask, but that’s kinda what the training does is we just practice it. I ask that question a lot, but at the same time it wasn’t always comfortable for me to ask either,” Stauch explained.
Training like this helps bring awareness to mental health issues and help people to navigate them for themselves and the people they care about.
“It’s a matter which I’m pretty well engrossed in, and it matters a lot to me to be able to help people out keep people safe and alive,” Streeter said.
These trainings also help reduce the stigma that surrounds mental health issues and suicide. Ultimately, reducing the stigma should help break barriers for access to mental health support so that anyone can feel comfortable getting the help they need.
