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Community programs aim to prevent suicide in Southern Indiana

The Evening News and The Tribune - 2/24/2023

Feb. 24—SOUTHERN INDIANA — Community members are launching several initiatives aimed at preventing suicide in Southern Indiana.

The Clark & Floyd Counties Suicide Prevention Coalition is relaunching in Southern Indiana after a hiatus during the pandemic. The first meeting kicked off on Feb. 18, and the coalition will meet monthly.

Ellen Kelley, a coalition leader, said the organization will focus on community education and lowering the stigma about mental health issues. She is LifeSpring Health System's former director of training.

"If you notice someone with symptoms of suicidal thoughts or symptoms of depression, you go, oh my gosh, I don't want to do the wrong thing, I don't want to say the wrong thing," she said. "And so we're going to try and educate as many people as possible."

Kelley emphasizes that the coalition is open to anyone in the community, not just clinicians who work in the mental health field.

"All you have to do is have an interest in helping to change things," she said.

The coalition is planning QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention training, which will allow participants to understand the warning signs of suicide and direct at-risk individuals to needed services. The organization plans to eventually present a series of training sessions, including one week in Clark County and one week in Floyd County.

"It's to help the average person know what to do," Kelley said. "If you feel like you need to talk to someone, what do you do, and how do you do it?

The next meeting of the Clark & Floyd Counties Suicide Prevention Coalition will take place at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 16 at Pearl Street Coffee House, 405 Pearl St. in Jeffersonville.

Another program addressing issues of suicide will kick off Tuesday. The local initiative, led by LifeSpring, is called Team SPARK, which stands for "suicide postvention assistance resources and knowledge." The team will serve Clark and Floyd counties.

The program is a LOSS Team, or local outreach to suicide survivors, that will respond to scenes of suicide deaths after receiving calls from law enforcement or the county coroner. The outreach team aims to provide resources for those who lost their loved ones to suicide.

LifeSpring received $10,000 from the Indiana Department of Health and the Indiana Suicide Prevention Coalition to start the LOSS program.

Elizabeth Gregory, an executive administrative assistant at LifeSpring, is a co-leader for Team SPARK and a leader with the local suicide prevention coalition. She explained the role of the team in connecting those grieving to local resources and letting them know that they are not alone.

"[Responders] will call us and say, hey, there's been a suicide, we respond to the scene, and we have these little packets," she said. "And in this packet is basically a lot of resources for them."

The goal is to "prevent another suicide," Gregory said.

Dustin Hawkins, director of training at LifeSpring, serves as a leader with the suicide prevention coalition and the SPARK Team. He noted that survivors, or those who lost someone close to them to suicide, face higher levels of suicidal ideation than those who have not been exposed and a higher risk of mental illness.

He said "postvention," or intervention for the bereaved after a suicide death, needs to be a greater focus. He emphasized the need for a "holistic approach" to addressing the issue of suicide.

"It's prevention and intervention, but what they haven't been looking at, except for maybe the last decade, is those wraparound services, getting to the scene, getting to the people who need it to provide those resources [and] to provide that support," Hawkins said.

LifeSpring is seeking volunteers to serve with Team SPARK, but although the program is run through LifeSpring, volunteers do not have to be associated with the provider.

Gregory said in addition to volunteers who can respond to the scene of a tragedy, they are seeking people who can help behind the scenes.

"One of the things we plan on doing once we get up and going is sending cards out to the families that we come in contact with just to let them know we're still here, so Mother's Day, Father's Day, the anniversary of the death...just to let them know, we're still here if you need us," she said.

Hawkins said they hope to have people on the outreach team who have experienced a loss of loved ones to suicide to offer "peer-to-peer support."

The kickoff for Team SPARK will take place at noon Tuesday at LifeSpring's location at 404 Spring Street in Jeffersonville.

Beth Keeney, president and CEO of LifeSpring, is a member of the Clark County Suicide & Overdose Fatality Review. She said the community saw an "exacerbation of suicidality" after COVID-19 hit.

"I've seen more people coming into treatment — people who never needed behavioral health care before," she said. "And then we've also seen more impulsivity and suicidality since the beginning of the pandemic."

She was happy to see the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline system roll out in the state of Indiana last year to provide people an easy number to call if they are in crisis.

Keeney said there is a need for people struggling with their mental health to receive immediate treatment, and she notes that LifeSpring has started a weekly "open access" program that provides a block of time for walk-in services.

"When people need treatment, they need treatment," she said. "They don't need to wait six weeks to get an intake appointment. They don't need to spend 45 minutes finding the right number on the internet."

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