Suicide Its Time to Talk About IT
hi i want to take you to
sunday july 14th a day
spent at the beach a day was on in the
sun
i was with my cousins in a day that many
of us enjoy
and appreciate but as we picked up after
the long day
and i was traveling traveling home
i noticed that my friend was following
me
and waving me to pull over
18 years old life was fun
no stress i had money i had friends i
had days in the sun
but as he pulled me over i’m thinking
what’s this about
as we pulled over i get out of the car
and he had some look in his face
and if anyone ever has seen this look
it’s the look and i said what’s going on
he said
you need to go home you need to go
directly home
your family needs you i said what’s
going on
he said barb you just need to go home
he was quite vague but i was persistent
how do you tell someone that their
brother has just died
and his best friend what do you say
and how do you say that so i asked him
again
i need to know what’s going on he said
barb
john died i said then we need to get to
the hospital
and he said he’s not at the hospital
barb john’s dead
he killed himself we need to get to your
family
it’s like i heard him but i didn’t hear
him
i want to get home but i could hardly
push on the gas pedal i couldn’t get
there fast enough i was on my way from
home
it’s like i wanted to go there but i
didn’t want to go there i want to get
back where
life was fun i want to get back to the
beach
and then in my head in my crazy thinking
as i’m driving
it’s like this is a prank i’m going to
get home
my brother’s gonna laugh at me and say
just kidding i just wanted to see if you
cared
i was playing all these mind games in my
head because it couldn’t be real
but as i walked into my family’s home i
heard my mother
and if you’ve ever heard the mother’s
whale it’s something you can’t forget
and it’s something you want to get out
of your mind and as i heard my mother
whale
i knew it wasn’t a prank this was the
real deal
she would wail she would rock
she would moan and then she would wail
and rock and moan
i couldn’t take it but in hindsight
i’m embarrassed to say i couldn’t fix it
i couldn’t change it and i didn’t want
to be part of it
so i left my family and went to my
friends
it was the most surreal thing how does
this happen
to a good family a family of faith an
amazing mom
my brother 20 years old what the hell it
doesn’t happen
it was like watching this horrible movie
and i was in it
i was angry blameful guilty
denial disbelief all at the same time
suicide is complex
i’m here today to talk about suicide and
i want to talk about it
i want to talk about it loud and clear i
want to talk about it in a way that i’m
not embarrassed
about my brother nor my family and i’m
not going to be judged
i couldn’t possibly wrap around my mind
what my brother was thinking
and there’s a part of me that really
doesn’t want to know but what i do know
is an individual’s perception of their
life
in that moment is their reasons for
suicide
i want to say that again suicide
is an individual’s perception of their
life
in that moment the day
john took his life i could have been
destroyed
but i made a decision that it was not
going to destroy me
it changed me forever it changed our
family forever
within moments but i knew i was going to
do something
i didn’t know what i was going to do but
i was going to do something
in those days you know when i was a lot
younger a teenager then
no one talked about suicide and it’s
still a secret in many ways and in many
families
we couldn’t find a therapist who
understood us or this complicated
suicide grief
so what i did is i attended my first
american association of suicidology
conference
these were the experts who knew
everything and i thought they could
answer my question to why suicide
because that’s the question most of us
have is why suicide
when john died by suicide there was no
one here to help us
that understood but today many things
have changed in some ways
we’ve evolved to a place where we’ve
done research
we’ve done trainings we have statistics
and we talk about prevention and there’s
resources for families breed by suicide
but what we really lack is the education
one thing that i know for sure as much
as we thought we were alone then
we were not alone over 6.9 million
people
are exposed to suicide every year
suicide does not discriminate
we know that in 2018 there’s over 47
000 people that died by suicide in the
united states
about 1400 right here in our state of
michigan
we know it’s the second leading cause of
death for our youth
tenth leading cause of death overall we
know that there are more suicides than
homicides
and more suicides than car crashes but i
want to put this another way and i want
to give you a visual
so if we think about comerica park which
is the home of the detroit tigers
and we think about this visual of having
a sold out crowd
on opening day with 7 000 people waiting
in line to see the game
that’s how many people died in 2018
we need to talk about this and we can’t
hush this word anymore
we need to talk openly because in most
places in gathering places
people are uncomfortable with the word i
was at a conference out in washington dc
and after the conference i was walking
back to my hotel
and i had to get some directions because
frankly i got lost
so i asked this young person this woman
if she could guide me to my hotel
and she said actually sure i’m walking
that way and i can walk with you
and as we walked we talked it was a
great conversation
and then the question came i asked her
so what do you do and what do you do
here in washington and
as we were speaking she gently and
quietly said i work for the irs
i said oh that’s interesting
we talked a little bit more and then she
said so what conference are you here for
and what do you do and i softly said i
looked around
and i said suicide awareness
i found myself softening that word
and fear of judgment
and then she said oh
actually this is my corner i’m going to
step across the street here
you need to go two blocks up take a left
and your hotel will be on the right hand
side
i think i scared her more than she
scared me
why are we so shamed about this word why
is there a stigma surrounding it
and sometimes when the media talks about
it they talk about in a very dramatic
way
and sometimes in the movies often times
it’s all about glamorizing suicide
there is nothing to glamorize when we
talk about suicide
when we talk about it we need to educate
because the majority of suicides are
preventable
we just found if you may have heard that
the university of michigan did a study
and what they found is that
connectedness is the number one
protective factor for suicide
and if we think about the time in this
pandemic and connectedness and how it
might be relative to suicide
i think that we’ve really connected
and it’s really a prevention thinking
about coven 19
and how we continue continue to hear
that we’re all in this together
well we might all be in the same storm
but we’re all in a different boat
we have different equipment different
experience
different levels of water and barriers
suicide is individual and it’s unique to
each person
covetous isn’t affecting everyone in the
same way
i worked with a person who was
chronically suicidal and he said barb
all this talk about depression and
people having anxiety
he said i kind of like it i thought that
was kind of an odd statement
and he said you know i think for the
first time
hearing people talk about it openly it’s
like people finally get me
he said i don’t want people to feel what
i feel but it’s nice to be understood
i think for the first time this young
man finally felt
understood and connected and not so
alone
people who are individuals with
different needs
but one thing we all have in common or
most of us have in common
is the need to be understood and
connected
how might you connect with someone who’s
struggling
with their mental health we’ve been
hearing a lot of great ideas for covid
and how it’s relative to how we might be
able to help someone
who’s struggling with their mental
health or isolation to not just be a
bystander
but to reach out make that phone call
take a walk send a message send a card
we’re using telus psychiatry and
telehealth
to remove the barriers for people who
are needing help and hope
these are simple yet effective tools
that can work for suicide prevention
copin 19 is teaching us a lot about
humanness
it’s been a game changer we flatten the
curve sooner than later
because we took precautions we wore a
mask
we stayed our distance we washed our
hands we had
many scientists and healthcare providers
working together
to find the best treatment and
prevention programs and plans
the rates of death were horrendous
but they were not what we anticipated
because
we worked together everyone plays a role
in suicide prevention as well
we need to listen to people and remind
them that they’re not alone
we want to help there is hope and i’m
willing to talk with you
about your struggles let me sit with you
these are simple yet effective tools for
preventing suicide
we need education for healthcare
providers funds for research
and treatment facilities we need
trainings for families
educators faithful communities with our
faith communities
and we need to really encourage and
support zero suicide initiative
it’s been effective around the world we
need to make sure that it’s affected
every every state in every county
experts in suicide are telling us that
we can expect a 34
increase in suicides following the covet
we have time to prepare
if we know we expect 34 but what we know
historically
is when there’s been a crisis that the
rates of suicide go down during the
crisis
because people are showing up they’re
coming together they’re supporting
we have means that people need to bring
them hope
but then two years following the
incident or the
the crisis what happens is the suicide
rates will tend to go
up if there is financial distress
bereavement and disconnect involved
if we are anticipating a 34 inch
increase of what we already have lost
why are we not doing something and why
are we not preparing
i live in michigan so we have not only
been connected or
affected by covet 19 right now but
currently we got hit with the floods in
a tornado
thousands of people have lost their
homes and precious belongings
devastation at its best and hopelessness
for many
the good news is there was thousands of
people volunteering and showing up to
help
we had a warning the outcome there were
no deaths
there were no dust because people had a
warning
they knew the dams were breached and
there was potential for flooding
the flooding would be coming soon we
were asked to evacuate
and my home we were down river so we had
a little more time to prepare
people were able to flee their homes for
safety take some of their precious
belongings
we had time to pack the schools had
opened their doors for shelter
so people had a safe place to go nursing
homes had to evacuate
we had medical care waiting and prepared
for them within
hours to make sure that they were safe
if we can do this in hours for tens of
thousands of people
we have the opportunity why would we
wait
this is an opportunity to prevent deaths
and
injuries we know how to listen
we know their suicide prevention plans
out there we just have to use them
in our family we were ignorant to
suicide we didn’t talk about it
we didn’t educate ourselves and we were
in denial in the odd way
i’m here to encourage you to start this
conversation with your own family
don’t deny that it could happen we
encourage
all people to educate yourself to
prepare yourself for that one
individual that one person that you
might come in contact with
that might be having thoughts of suicide
do you know how to respond
would you be comfortable hearing their
story of suicide
or would you say something like don’t
talk so stupid
or why would you do that to your family
and guilt them
to living or would you be comfortable in
connecting them to life
for many people it’s a natural response
and it’s comfortable to hear that story
of suicide and to just sit but for other
people
they need to practice and to learn this
life-saving school
tool that many people have learned and
has been effective
cpr save thousands of life every year
simple life-saving measure you recognize
when someone might be having a heart
attack
and you respond in a life-saving way
we can save thousands of life learning
cpr
in my family we have heart disease we
each learned how to do cpr
if you’ve ever taken a training it was
to learn the signs
and to respond most people with thoughts
of suicide
will have a warning sign or behavior
change
some do but some don’t i encourage you
to learn
these signs some people
however hide behind a mask they pretend
like everything’s okay
life is good they have the world they’re
making money they’re prestigious in the
community
those types of people are really hard to
recognize
there are generally clear signs the
majority of people leave you a sign
but they’re not always recognized
because we don’t understand them
you are 10 times more likely to come in
contact with someone with thoughts of
suicide
than someone having a heart attack so a
few hours of your time
you could help us decrease these numbers
and prepare for what they’re expecting
in the near future i challenge you to
take action when you can
my family did not get the time or the
chance before it was too late
so instead of just doing awareness let’s
go one step further and let’s learn the
tools
be an advocate ninety percent of people
that die by suicide
have a diagnosable mental illness we
need to better prepare mental health
care we need to better prepare people
both in our mental health and our
behavior health
or our health care system to understand
what we need to help
we need to our insurance companies our
employee assistance programs to minimize
the cost
to remove the barriers for people
reaching out and getting help
mental health is as real as physical
health and we need to treat it that way
the value of integrated care is treating
the whole person
i challenge you to register today for a
training there’s access to the
sprc website which is the suicide
prevention resource center
which is a national website for all of
the
quality trainings that you could sign
and register for
so find the training that fits your
needs and your level of need
i can’t change what happened but i can
change the way we do things because
it happened i started a survivors
of support group survivors of suicide
support group 30 years ago
to be there for those people bereaved by
suicide
so it’s been 30 years ago since i’ve
been working in this field
and every day we’re seeing change i’ve
certified i’m a certified suicide
prevention
trainer and advocate speaking to over
150 000 people around the country
i developed an aftercare training so
that i can train the first responders on
how to be helpful for the families on
scene
i’m instrumental in writing two suicide
prevention plans at both state and local
levels
my experience in being notified of my
brother’s death i wanted to make change
for other people
so we have a victims advocate group at
our sheriff’s department where we go and
assist the police officers
at a scene to bring comfort for families
and help them navigate
these early hours of grief we also have
a lost team
local outreach for survivors of suicide
these are wonderful people trained by dr
frank campbell
and sitting with people early on
peer-to-peer who’ve lost someone to
suicide to bring them home
most recently i was appointed to the
governor’s suicide prevention
commission it’s an honor to be a voice i
appreciate
i appreciate after all the trainings
that i do or many of the trainings that
i do
of how effective they can be getting
emails and texts and phone calls
from our young people are middle
schoolers and high schoolers
after the training they’ve taken a text
message of a friend talking of suicide
and they show an adult and they help
save their friend’s life because they
now know what to do
i’ll be speaking on a stage to hundreds
of thousands of people
people come up afterwards to share their
story of suicide
because i’ve talked about it without
stigma and have talked about it without
judgment
so they feel comfortable talking to a
stranger following the training
to share their story or someone else’s
story of thoughts of suicide
and they know in the end that i’m going
to connect them to somebody in the
community
can help that can help take care of them
because we know that suicide
isn’t about killing yourself people
don’t really want to die
they just don’t know what else to do
with their pain i have another story of
a mother
who said that she had a concern she
didn’t have a concern that her daughter
had just been isolating and she was sad
but she never connected sad to suicide
after the training she went home she
talked to her daughter
about her sadness and talked about
suicide
she asked her and her daughter said yes
that she had been having thoughts they
cried to help
cried together but then they got help
together
and yet there was another dad who had
found a note and he said you know barb
do people just write notes and talk
about this for attention
and i said yes they have a pain and they
don’t know how to scribe it they don’t
know how to ask for help so they write
it out or they talk about it jokingly
sometimes people don’t know how to ask
for help
he went home he talked to his son about
the note
his son said yes to suicide and they got
help together
and yet there was a pediatrician 30
years in the field who said
i never had to ask a patient about
suicide i’ve never had a suicidal
patient
after the training she learned how to
ask in a way that was direct and caring
she went back to work two weeks later
she called me she said barbara i asked
my first patient about suicide
i’ve been caring for him for the past 16
years he said yes
and she helped take care of all of his
needs i had found purpose for my pain
asking about suicide is something to
reteach and encourage
if you have a concern for someone it’s
important that you recognize
that they need help if you notice a
change in behavior
a change in their life that’s causing
disruption they might be doing something
like
increased alcohol substance abuse
anxiety
anger agitation change in sleep change
in eating
any behavior changer for change for that
individual
is an opportunity to have this
conversation
don’t deny that it can’t happen in your
family
or your community
i encourage you that if you’re having
thoughts of suicide now
if you’re watching this ted talk if you
are having any thoughts
please call the 1-800-273
talk phone number or text 741-741
there are people 24 hours a day waiting
to hear from you and willing to help
suicide does not have to happen people
care
and are willing to help i encourage you
today
to talk about suicide and i
i want to challenge you to pick up the
phone
schedule a time to take the training
talk about suicide
and take the training thank you