Alliance Project Suicide Prevention Training for Rankin County School District

hello everyone and welcome i am bobbied and i'm the project coordinator here at mississippi state university for youth mental health first aid gatekeeper trainings and today we are presenting the alliance project suicide prevention training to you all my name is rachel claire franklin and i'm the licensed training and response coalition for the alliance project throughout the state of mississippi we're going to share our screen with you now so you can see our training side presentations for the duration of the training so again this is the alliance project suicide prevention training again my name is rachel claire franklin i'm presenting alongside bobby joe vince and we just want to thank you for spending some time with us and working through this training presentation that we will be giving you throughout this morning so some goals for our alliance project training so things we're going to go through are identifying distress so learning what distress looks like among those that we share our day-to-day lives with how to make connections with people and build an alliance with others helping those who may feel isolated and encouraging individuals to engage in help-seeking behavior and learn about various referral resources that you can utilize both with your students in your educational setting but everything that we're going to talk about today is going to be applicable throughout your day-to-day life and so you'll be able to use this again in your educational setting but also anywhere throughout your life where you may be coming into contact with someone who may be experiencing any types of distress some other goals that we have with this training presentation is just to build a network of individuals who can intervene with those that they're concerned about and increase the knowledge throughout mississippi of resources that are available and encourage others to seek assistance when needed so we know that there's a lot of resources out there but sometimes we're not always knowledgeable about what those resources are and how they may be useful or beneficial to those we may come in contact with i feel like one of the most stressful parts of like my life so far has been the first semester of sixth grade you can be sad scared angry it's a brain that's sad depression it's not just like sadness it's like a lot of things stress and tiredness really stress for like not really a good reason you're just like overwhelming yourself when someone took my toy and river and then i gave it back even on monday when my grandma's dog died i felt sad [Music] [Music] i was pretty upset like you have no energy when you're depressed and you're just like don't want to do anything i make a mad face crying when i'm mad and angry my breasts get the really so fast heartbeat is really fun i feel like my stomach starts turning when we're doing [Music] [Music] the seemed like really serious i'd like to tell them i just take a couple toothbrushs i hug this duck animal squishy pillow like an air [Music] they call worried boys they always say to lock up the worry in an imaginary [Music] someone that will listen [Music] help somebody [Music] let us have a family with me if she like notices i'm like kind of feeling down or something like you can talk to me or your dad or anybody or people like that about anything my parents like their parents like you can talk to them whenever something is on your mind mostly it's because kids don't tell their parents like they need to tell them more about like what's going on in their life so they can never hold you so you can see in this video even our youngest of children are able to identify things that are distressing and things that their other peers may be experiencing that may be distressing and interestingly you can also see that our young children also know how to help each other and they're also able to identify various things that they may need from adults in their lives or also how to help other children that may be experiencing these types of things so why is this important we're going to talk now a little bit about just some of the statistics i mean why we think all of this is important to begin with we know that death by suicide is the second leading cause of death for individuals in america aged 15 through 24. and this um this placement of being set the second leading cause has been in the top three now for over a decade and so we know that it has been a problem for a while it's been a major concern and we know that it has consistently been and will likely remain in the top three causes as well we know in 2019 that roughly 6 000 deaths by suicide occurred among this age population and so while that's going to be some of your students within your educational setting we are starting to see a pretty big increase in deaths by suicide for individuals even younger than 15. for myself personally the youngest i have heard of individually here in mississippi has been four years of age and so that would be an individual before they were even starting their kindergarten year and so in 2019 as well we know that a little over 47 000 individuals died by suicide in america and one thing i like to plug here is that if that number feels really big to you that's okay that is a really huge number um one thing i always like to note though is that those are deaths by suicide that we are able to count by death certificates and so a lot of the times especially in rural america the coroner actually has a lot of ability to fluctuate what is stated on a death certificate as the cause of death and so this is not going to account for things like accidental drug overdoses or single car accidents in which they may be ruled an accident instead of a death by suicide and so that number is actually much larger than that but this is just what we're able to draw from those records in regards to the cdc being able to report that overall number we know in mississippi that there are 233 residential psychiatrists here and another thing i like to note here is that that is residential addresses of psychiatrists and so many psychiatrists in mississippi live along the border and so they may live in north mississippi and work across the state line in memphis or they may work in mobile or they may work in slidell or monroe or even over into arkansas a little bit and so you can easily probably subtract 75 from that number if not more so we know that we do not have enough mental health providers here in the state of mississippi i think we could probably all agree on that um if anything and so one thing that we like to just to talk a little bit about with the alliance project training is that you may be the most valuable person that another person ever comes in contact with and so we want you to feel prepared we want you to feel confident we want you to feel like you can engage in these conversations and with your students with your co-workers your family and friends i'm going to be able to help in the best way that you possibly can so one thing i would like to talk about as well is some world war ii experiments that were done and if you've never seen the youtube videos i'd like to encourage you to spend some time on youtube and look up the ice endurance experiments if you've ever been to the ripley's believe it or not museum in gatlinburg you will have seen the titanic experiment water that they have where you try to stick your arm in the water to see how long you can keep your water down in that ice ice cold water and so what these experiments did was they had individuals in separate rooms and so they would have a person in a room by themselves um put their hand in some ice cold water just to see how long they could keep their arm in the water and then in a room adjacent to them they would have an individual do the same thing but with the peer support so an individual that was there maybe cheering them on or telling them hey you can do this just a few more seconds um and so just a peer support and so what they found was really was that the mere presence of at least one caring person doubles the endurance of an individual and so those individuals who had that pure support they were able to hack their hand in the ice cold water twice as long in most instances um than the individuals in the room where they were by themselves and so it's just a really good image example of how support and having others around us can be really really helpful in times when we may be feeling distressed this is an image of the state of mississippi obviously and so this is going to be just an image of death by suicide and frequency so don't think about rates or ratios or things like this this is just a raw number of how many despite suicide occurred in these counties between 2005 and 2014. i realize they're a little bit dated however these images are not published very often and so we definitely want to use what we can and so take a few seconds to just kind of look at this image and think about kind of what comes to your mind first you may notice that the more heavily populated areas um have those darker darker shaded ends which are going to indicate the higher number of frequency as well and so keep in mind where you have more people living the likelihood of that frequency being higher is going to be there and so right there in central mississippi up near desoto county right there at south haven in memphis and then down in the coastal area again a highly populated area as well and so look at the chart um look at this map and kind of think about where the people you know in your life live and what counties do they live in and what may be kind of occurring in those counties as well uh one thing that we do like to note as well is if you you think back to 2005 um some of those numbers that you see along the coast are going to be hurricane katrina numbers as well and so that is also included and then obviously the several years that followed that so let's talk for a minute about risk factors and when we talk about risk factors what we're talking about are the things that are likely to contribute to someone feeling more at risk for suicidal behavior or suicidal engagements so many of these you will already know some you may some you may not but one of the things that a lot of people like to ask about is social media especially with adolescents and most of us know that bullying has has grown in frequency as well as intensity um many of us myself included i did not have smartphones or ipads while growing up and so there wasn't a whole lot of internet bullying going on if you went to school and there was bullying occurring it kind of ended at the end of the school day because we didn't really have access to each other outside of school unless we were engaged in the same outside activities so just keep in mind that you know that is present you know across the board from our littlest of people right now to even our oldest individuals that are living right now you can see some bullying um especially on the internet across all of those um lack of connectedness and feeling like a burden have been shown to be two of the major risk factors associated with suicidal behavior or even suicidal ideation so we have all we have this list of risk factors but always keep in mind that those two risk factors are almost always present in someone's life and so we want to make sure that we're getting people engaged in things that they like so they can feel connected with other individuals that may have the same types of interests and we also want to make sure that we're helping individuals not feel like a burden not making them feel like their problems are more than we can handle or that they're more than we're willing to kind of spend time with them um to help them with or give them space to talk about it one that's often forgotten about is chronic and invisible illness and some of those illnesses are becoming more prevalent even in our school-aged children and so it's very difficult for individuals to experience these illnesses because they walk around feeling like they have to continuously fight for either accommodations or just people to have knowledge about what it is or isn't that they may not be struggling with and so just keep in mind that some of your students some of your co-workers your friends and family as well have these chronic and invisible illnesses that we may not see with our eyes but that people are experiencing that can be pretty debilitating at times obviously poverty a family history of mental illness any type of previous suicide attempts are going to be an increased risk factor as well for future suicidal behavior social and family expectations i know at the college level we see this a lot a lot of individuals struggle with you know my parents want me to go to school to be a doctor or a lawyer or really something that's just going to make a lot of money and oftentimes we'll see that individuals are really not interested in those types of fields and so it creates a lot of inner conflict about do i pursue what my family wants me to do because they're also supporting me financially or you know do i want to pursue the thing that i'm really interested in and you're going to see this in your middle school students and high school students as well as time comes for them to pick their elective classes you may start to see some of that inner struggle as well sexual orientation and gender identity concerns relationship concerns any type of substance use as well as domestic violence so whether an individual is a part of that domestic violence or whether they are a witness to domestic violence can also increase their risk factor as well food and shelter in security one of our scenarios in a little bit we'll talk a little bit more about food insecurity but i think it's important to note that all of your students do not go home to appropriate food or care or shelter as well and so a lot of your students may struggle with this and then abuse of any kind is also going to increase the likelihood that individuals would engage in suicidal behavior as well so this is not an all-encompassing list um you know we know that there are some that are not included here on the list but these are some of the ones that we feel like you may be most likely to see within your educational setting a few other things that we wanted to include in regards to the educational settings specifically that we may often forget about so if you have students who are sleeping in class or maybe sleeping during lunch or breaks um that may be a sign of something else going on as well so maybe your students aren't getting enough sleep at home maybe there's not appropriate technology supervision in your house and so while every student that sleeps at your school is not at risk for maybe suicide it is going to be an indicator for you that maybe there is something more happening so sleeping in class is pretty typical um you know we all do it at some point in time but if you have children that are sleeping during lunch break or during on their recreational breaks when students are typically really excited to be awake that's going to be a pretty good indicator for you as well also keep in mind that if you have students that are sleeping in your schools it's not always that they're not getting enough sleep at home while that's probably the number one concern they could have something such as narcolepsy or they can have we are seeing sleep apnea as well and in our middle school and high school students as well now and so just keeping in mind that there may also be a medical condition that needs to be assessed as well taking or sneaking food from the cafeteria or other peers is also a concern that you may see in your school setting and that's going to go back to that food insecurity as well so unhelpful behavior exhibited over a reward option and so what i mean by that is if you have a student who continues to exhibit problematic behavior after you give them an option for reward so the unhelpful behavior is basically more beneficial for them than whatever reward that you offer them so if you say you know if you will you know sit still and you know follow the instructions for the next two hours i will allow you um you know this this toy from the treasure box at the end of the day so if your toy box at the end of the day is not getting that student to um maybe stop engaging in those problematic behaviors that's going to be something that you want to pay attention to as well poor or a change in hygiene is going to be a pretty good indicator for you as well so if you have maybe an 11th grade student who is typically showered and groomed and you know comes to school with all of their belongings um and maybe they you notice that they stop showering or maybe they stop engaging in oral hygiene those types of things those are going to be things that you want to look for as well other things maybe arguing with adults and peers with no clear goal you know we see that a lot in adolescence to begin with but we say that every behavior has a function okay and so every behavior that someone exhibits is to get something or to engage in some type of clear function for that person and so if you've got individuals who are just arguing for the sake of arguing you may want to look at you know is there bullying behavior going on or is this maybe a stimulation maybe issue as well where individuals feel like they need to be engaged and they need to be engaged in arguing in order to kind of fulfill stimulation needs or um you know just feeling frustrated in general so you also want to look for students who may be slower leaving the classroom or the school at the end of the day you know most students are really ready to leave the school at the end of the day you know they're they're running for the bus line or the car router line or however it is that they get home in the afternoons typically folks are really ready to go and so if you have individuals who are kind of lagging around or you know using the restroom at the very end of the day and maybe being late for the bus or even missing the bus um there's a function in that behavior and it's communicating something to you about why they do not want to leave the school at that time so be on the lookout for that as well and then you may have students who purposefully give incorrect answers for further instruction and so some of this is going to be really prevalent in your students who may feel like they're not getting a lot of support outside of the school or maybe they do not have a good social support network these students will often give incorrect answers just to get a little bit more instruction from you whether that's just because they want your attention or they just kind of want that guided positive instruction for you so i know that that can be really frustrating at times for you especially if you know you have students who can do well and that they know the answers um if you start to notice that they're purposefully giving incorrect answers you may want to kind of look a little further into that as well and so next we're going to look at the fight flight or freeze and so this is just going to be a really quick short video for you i really like the video it breaks it down for it to be really easily understandable but i think for sometimes you know we're thinking about our young people it's important for us to remember that they also have this fight flight or freeze response and so we'll watch this quick video have you run away from a saber-toothed tiger recently maybe you have but the stress response you feel when you are late to work or the growl your stomach makes when you haven't had anything but an energy bar and coffee in the morning is the same stress response we had when we were cavemen that stress response is called fight or flight trunk is a real-life caveman he goes to work hunting saber-cutes and rabbits for his family unfortunately the saber-tooth chases drunk on occasion and his physical and emotional stress levels go way up when this happens grog's body's intelligence kicks in to help him escape his heart rate goes way up his blood pressure spikes more adrenaline is produced and the body moves the blood away from the digestive tract and into the muscles as digesting food isn't a priority at that moment gronk eventually does escape and rests at home and after 15 to 20 minutes his body resets and begins to operate normally again now your body doesn't know the difference between running from a saber-toothed tiger or rushing your kids to school your body stress response is triggered in both situations so your blood pressure heart rate and food digestion is the same as drugs when he's running away from a tiger these types of situations could happen every day in our culture the difference between you and the caveman is the caveman was able to relax in his cave soon after he finished stressing out so for the whole day the caveman would stress the duration of a hunt which would last maybe an hour you on the other hand have to deal with the stress of racing your kids to school traffic work relationships and everything else that life constantly throws at you plus add in the constant chemical stress that comes from the unhealthy foods we eat and it's like you are running from the saber tooth all day long the solution is to build your own cave you have to build your own cave every day and it means finding some peace in the pileup of traffic while driving to work it means going to bed on time instead of staying up late binging on your favorite tv shows it means taking some time to go outside and do some relaxing work instead of locking yourself up in your eyes otherwise this chronic stress will open you up to most diseases because your immune system will take and a lack of nutrients that your body needs due to not being able to digest your food properly add to that the fact that your adrenals which are the glands that sit across your kidney and decide where your hormones go are so active with the abundance of stress you experience and put into your body you will develop adrenal fatigue put all this together and now you know why stress is the start of all disease process how can we make our fight or flight more effective how can we turn it off when we don't need it and bring it up when it's necessary ask yourself what you are putting in your body for energy your body is probably asking your brain for those artificial stimulants you get like coffee processed sugars or genetically modified foods because it's confused on why the adrenals aren't filling up like they used to you have sucked your adrenals dry of hormones that didn't need to be active in the first place that's huge because we are taking a finite source and sucking it dry what people may not know is that a lot of things trigger the final flight response emotional stresses eating unhealthy foods overreacting to life's daily challenges going through tough emotional times all triggered by for flight however that leaves a lot of areas where we can improve it so if this video has successfully stressed you out with all the info it's loaded you up with you should take a minute to relax at least you don't have a tiger running after you if you always put limit on everything you do physical or anything else it will spread into your work and into your life there are no limits there are only plateaus and you must not stay there you must go beyond bruce lee so that's kind of a fun video that gives you kind of a picture and a video image of how the fight flight or freeze response works and so i would encourage you to maybe if you are an educator of high school students or even your older middle school students and you're talking about maybe stress or stress response at any point in time show them a video such as this i mean it really gives individuals the ability to connect with what it is that they're feeling or experiencing inside of their bodies i like to talk a lot about the physiological response to stress and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes so now let's talk about the good the bad and the stressful so it is helpful to talk about stress in regards to thinking about predictors of suicide again as hinted earlier with our risk factors anything that causes stress can lead to the predictors that we commonly think of we know that stress is a common body reaction to a demand or to an anticipated demand what we are looking for is when stress leads to distress we know that some stress can be motivating but that same stress can also turn into distress and it can become debilitating at times we all have our own personal thresholds that are ever changing day by day consider this example on tuesday morning you forgot your wallet and realized this when you arrived at work on your lunch break you drive home to get it because you know that you will need it and that afternoon experiencing nothing adverse but enjoying the music on the radio and sunshine on saturday when you arrive at the grocery store and before you enter this door you realize that you have left your wallet again this results in immediate negative self-talk looking for anything to blame and increase increased frustration and irritation this may sound very relatable as this can occur for any of us at any time and this is an example of how our personal thresholds can fluctuate and it can change based on various things such as time of day our expectations or requirements for that day or simply the ways in which our body reacts to an immediate circumstance we are experiencing this movement from stress to distress can be manifested in many different ways this can be shown in sleep related concerns feeling helpless feeling socially withdrawn or pulling back decreasing self-care and not feeling as though you belong with others or feeling like a burden so let's talk about our stressful life events we all have happy and sad stress so with this we often think about the sad stressors and how understandably those things can be predictions of suicide with stress though it is beneficial to realize that we are not just talking about bad or sad things we are also talking about how it can often be good or happy things as well that contribute to stress and discomfort so take a moment to look over this list and see where you may relate among these experiences so if any of you have ever planned a wedding you know that this can be a very stressful thing for it being the happiest day of your life there's a great deal of stress and it's usually an event that is better looking back on it rather than during the planning and sometimes the actual moment if you've ever planned a vacation you know that you've been looking forward to it and that it's a really exciting event however it can also induce a lot of stress when you start breaking down all that has to be done in order to enjoy that vacation you need to first save money decide where you're going and then where you'll stay you're leaving and returning dates obtaining anything else that you may need for that vacation and again it's a very exciting event but it's one that requires a lot of planning or organization and that's not easy for everyone one thing to keep in mind is that people will often hear statements such as why are you so down in the depressed this is the best time of your life and you have everything going for you this statement is a good example of how we can often forget that we do not always know the underlying elements or psychological responses of individuals and how these impact their overall well-being a lot of these listed can bring on unique stress and it's really important to keep in mind again that we're looking for that transition from stress to distress another way to look at this is when an individual may be able to manage their circumstances and then an ability for that continued management stress shifts resulting in distress so now we're going to introduce the five steps of the alliance project so these are the five steps of this usi prevention curriculum that you're going to engage with when either you're working with someone who may be experiencing suicidal ideations or intentions or just someone who's experiencing distress in general so the first step of this process is going to be just being able to identify that someone is experiencing distress so two ways for us to really look at how to best identify this is for you personally to maybe think about in what ways do you express that you're feeling overwhelmed and maybe what things would people notice if you were feeling this way so some responses that we typically get are you know some people may start to cry more easily or maybe if they're able to cry they feel like they're no longer able to cry about what's about what's going on in their life individuals may feel more withdrawn from their social supports individuals may quit um activities that they're involved in or maybe just withdraw from those activities for a little while i always like to ask when we're doing this presentation in person you know which individual on your team in this room would you know immediately if something was going on in their life maybe their demeanor changes the personality maybe just becomes a little bit different and you're able to notice that something is going on for them and so just notice the things that maybe you do when you're experiencing distress or you're feeling overwhelmed those are going to be the same things that we're looking for in both your students your friends your family and your coworkers i think oftentimes we try to over intellectualize this process and we start looking for very specific things when at the reality and at the court it's just people engaging in their day-to-day life just as you and i would and so we want to look for those things from the very beginning i like to say and i really do believe that identifying distress may be one of the most important aspects of suicide prevention because if we can engage with people at this stage of their distress we may prevent them from even becoming suicidal in the first place and so sometimes individuals just need people to kind of notice on what's going on for them and maybe engage with them a little bit to remind them that hey people people notice me people know i'm important people think that my existence is beneficial to them as well and so just keep this in mind you know as you think about the ways in which you express yourself and how others around you express themselves so we'll look at three different scenarios here really quickly and just kind of talk about the ways in which these individuals have experienced their distress so a 16 year old student approached you during break today and requested to sit in your class during their afternoon biology class after further discussion you noticed scratch marks on their arms and requested to consult with their biology teacher for approval they quickly became frustrated and left quickly stating do not worry about it i'll just go to the library instead and so many of you have probably encountered students like this especially if you're in the high school setting and so you can see here that this individual first of all one wants to opt out one of one of their major classes of the day and so what is it about this biology class that this individual is trying to get away from and so sometimes it can be really easy for us to say what is it about that biology class that this individual is trying to escape from and maybe it is the biology class maybe it's another peer or student in that class maybe it's their biology instructor maybe it's just the classroom environment and setting that that individual is sitting in maybe the lighting is different maybe the smell in a biology classroom may be different there may be something you know such as that going on as well in that class and so it's really important for us to not always jump to an assumption of what it is that we feel like someone is trying to get away from um but just exploring that with that student and then you can see further in this scenario [Music] once you ask to get approval from that individual's biology instructor they quickly left and so they're giving you some indication that they do not want you to consult with their biology instructor they would really prefer you not to do that and so you also have an indication that they're willing they're willing to do this without your approval as well as they have stated i'll just go to the library instead and so there's a really strong desire for this individual to not be involved in that class later in the day again it could be something as simple as they're tired and they don't feel like paying attention to such a lesson that day um up to anything else that could be going on so just keeping in mind the the things that would indicate distress for you in this scenario the quickly leaving and an individual wanting to scope a major class the second scenario today a fourth grade student requested an extra milk at lunch after they were denied that request they were later observed taking another child's milk at the conclusion of lunch you noticed on the way back to your classroom that the student have placed wrapped food in their pants pockets when you later questioned the student they began to cry and stated i am saving this for later i will spool it lunch but i want this at home tonight and so this goes back to that food insecurity statement that we said early earlier about potential risk factors and so you don't often see individuals wanting to take other people's milk usually we're wanting to take you know either water or juice or soft drinks if those are available in your educational settings and so you've got this young individual on who is wanting more milk which is typically an indicator as well and then you notice that this individual is putting food into their pants pockets and so typically you know we often we will see children take food from the cafeteria however they're not typically shoving it down into their pants pockets and so that's going to be a good informational indicator for you as well and then the crying when you asked about the food and and then being very clear about being full at lunch and wanting to take it home that night and so that's a pretty open response from a fourth grade student so that's going to give you a lot of information about maybe what they're experiencing after they leave school each day and maybe how you can proceed forward in maybe speaking with someone about this student's experience so the last scenario that we will look at in regards to identifying distress a well-known 17 year old student at your school was recently in a car accident that resulted in them having to sit out their fall sport for the school this student was a starter on an athletic team that was anticipated to compete for the state championship this year this student has recently started sleeping in class being confrontational in class discussions and less engaged with peer groups and so i don't know where all of the sports fall in regards to when they're played but i do know that let's say for example football is played in the fall and so if you have a 17 year old student who has been working for several years and is really excited about their senior year playing football for the school and maybe you all have been really good in your district which i believe you all historically have been if you have an individual who's not able to compete for that state championship you're going to see a lot of shifts and not only that person's maybe personality but also their presenting behavior in their day-to-day engagement with school and so it's it's likely that you'll start seeing them kind of sleep in class or being confrontational because what i know personally that a lot of students who are athletes a lot of their engagement with their day-to-day academics is as a result of their sport and so you know just paying attention to the way maybe your athletes engage with their coursework based on you know not only athletic performance and team performance but their own personal lives as well can really contribute to the way in which they engage in the educational setting so just keep these three scenarios in mind you can always go back and re-watch this and kind of get some ideas about some things you want to be looking out for but these give you some really good overall quick examples of things that you can start to kind of pick out for individuals always say if you're not really sure maybe start writing down some things that you start seeing from individuals and so you can kind of compile a list of things that maybe you see or hear um because a lot of the times we're like oh this is just one thing it's not that big of a deal and then maybe three weeks later we kind of forget what they exhibited three weeks ago and so we want to kind of make sure we're compiling those things together to have a complete kind of view of what it is this person may be experiencing so some other contributors of the educational setting that you may see that are related to your students being overwhelmed or may be contributing to their distress and educational setting as well so we know that bullying is a problem we know it's a major concern in the educational setting but we never really talk about what it's like for individuals who observe that bully and so we know that this can really contribute to some distress for individuals maybe they feel like they can't step in and help someone maybe it's their friend that's being bullied and they're a little hesitant about maybe stepping in or saying something because they don't also want to become you know a subject of a bully within their school and so just thinking about you know what your students see a lot of the times we know that say when there's fights in schools you know we think that two two or less individuals you know get into a fight it gets broken up and everyone moves on about their day we never really think about the impact that that has on everyone that was around them that saw what was happening and whether it causes them to be distressed or not what we do know is that their adrenal system is going to be activated so they're going to have that adrenaline and they're going to probably have that for several hours and so you may see if you have a large fight maybe during a break period time most of the people around that area at the time are going to have difficulty kind of resettling back into the next class that they have just because of that adrenaline sensory input is one that we often forget about as well fluorescent lighting is an enemy for many many people and so i know for me personally i hate fluorescent lighting um i know for many people it gives people headaches it can have an impact on people's eyesight abilities and i know that fluorescent lighting is pretty consistent throughout educational settings also tile floors you know again two things that we never really think about impacting students experience at school but tile floors um are pretty they're typically really shiny and they're very noisy and so if a student you know closes closes a door down the hallway several classrooms can typically hear that and so they provide distraction and they also provide kind of this bright shiny reflection from those fluorescent lights which can be really overwhelming sometimes i want to note as well as your students are kind of reintegrating into to their school after maybe being virtual this last year these are going to be things that are going to be very very difficult for students to readjust to so if you have the ability to maybe put some lamps in your classroom consider that maybe to kind of tone down some of the fluorescent lighting so just thinking about the sensory input that your students experience at their school as well at school is often when individuals experience their first friendship that ends you know so you may have a fourth grader who you know had a best friend last week and maybe they're not best friends this week and so we try to talk um with our young people about you know the fluctuation of relationships and engagements with people um but i'm not sure that we do it enough you know we typically you know seem to think that you know everybody has friends that come and go but you have to remember that when you're nine years old you're not really able to think outside of being nine years old this this might feel like your world is ending if your best friend now has a new best friend and so just thinking about ways that you can approach those students who are experiencing that temperature comfort again is another one of those things that we often don't think about it's also one of those things that we don't always have control over in large buildings especially large buildings with cinderblock walls that may hold cold or may hold heat you know even you as the educator may not have the ability to control that sometimes we cannot always cool down um you know school buses before you know 30 students get on them in the afternoons and so that can contribute to some frustration and irritation as well so just keeping in mind you know one thing i've heard of of educators doing is having students bring in maybe a jacket or a light jacket that they just leave at the school in their classroom you know they're young students and they are in the same classroom every day all day so just thinking about ways that you can kind of engage with your students just for their comfortability um hunger and hormone pains um at puberty um you know one thing to consider as well is that typically as our students are hitting um puberty age range they don't they're not typically fed more um or less at the educational setting but just keeping in mind that the food distribution at a school is very you know rigid it's very scheduled it's very structured and often times students can begin to get headaches maybe they need to eat a little bit more often and so just keeping that in mind as well frequent asking to use the restroom may be an indication of something um for you as well maybe if there's some type of medical concern that's going on maybe there are some um physical pains or complaints that may be occurring as well and realization of ability and so we were talking earlier about maybe family expectations social expectations of what people maybe should or should not be doing with their education and one thing to keep in mind is we have a lot of students who want to grow up and be things that um maybe they're just really not capable of doing and so for example you know i thought i was going to go to vet school at one point in time and it wasn't until i was a freshman in college that i realized that i was really good at biology but i was really incapable of doing things like chemistry and physics and so there will always come a point where people realize hey i'm able to do this particular thing or i'm not able to do this particular thing and if that's happening for your students within the educational settings that can be really really distressing probably you know and typically because we don't have super great coping skills in high school or middle school either and so the ways in which we may respond to that realization can be problematic as well reintegrating after an absence so again coming back to school maybe after even spring break or maybe winter break um or summer break is typically you know a huge huge adjustment for students as well and so just keep in mind that anytime your students have to be out you know for more than one day it's going to be an adjustment for them coming back recreation time and break time can often be problematic for individuals who may not have a strong social support network and so during these times if you don't have someone that is monitoring your hallways stairways and those types of places you may want to consider that you'll often find these individuals in some really interesting places throughout your school because they'll just go to kind of be alone find somewhere they can sit by themselves and also if you have students who have sensory input concerns it may just be too overwhelming for some people during break time to all go to the same place where it tends to be really really loud and chaotic structure versus no structure so keep in mind that the educational setting for your students may be the only place that they're really getting structure and so they may push against that sometimes you know if there's no structure maybe in the home or outside of the home or maybe they're just kind of free to you know explore whatever kind of hobbies they want to do after school it can be really difficult for students to kind of adjust to that structure accessibility of food and drink again you know a lot of the times our students may just be hungry or thirsty and that can often contribute to acting out behaviors as well and the medical complaints you know especially at puberty but also you know we're seeing more somatic complaints by young from younger and younger individuals so headaches stomach aches you know if individuals aren't getting enough sleep um all of the things that kind of come with that as well and so again this is not an exhaustive list but it's a good list to kind of keep in mind that we don't always talk about or take notice of that may contribute to to individuals individuals experiences as well so now we will move on into our next step of our action plan and this is breaking the ice so moving into the second step of how we break the ice i will be honest with you this is one of the hardest things to do if this were easy we would not have a bunch of cheesy pickup lines because we know that making a connection or breaking the ice with someone can be really difficult at times so what our team did was look in the literature and there is not as much on this as you would think from the psychological literature but where you actually find it is in the sales and retail literature if you've ever worked in sales or off of commission you're constantly trying to make a connection with someone what we know about breaking the ice is that there are many different ways to do this but a couple of ways to do it is just by simply introducing yourself and attempting to invite someone into a conversation one way is to directly ask someone how they are doing recognizing that this can also be uncomfortable at times be sure to utilize open-ended questions such as tell me about your day instead of did you have a good day because you're going to get a lot more context from the first question than the yes or no answer to the second question you want to ask those questions that pull context and this is for both when you are engaging with those of concern but also just in your day-to-day life with your friends and family one thing we encourage people to do is to try and find something that you may have in common with someone else maybe there's something that you observe about them that is going to give you a clue as to what's important to them for example something on or about their bag their hat or an activity that they are currently doing such as playing a game or listening to music anything that you can to utilize to to connect often there's something that we can find in common that helps with the initial awkwardness of breaking the ice we never encourage people to lie to make a connection however if someone has on nike tennis shoes and you love adidas it's okay to compliment them on those shoes and ask them where they got them and so on so you can build a conversation to help you engage with them some people carry peppermints or gum and you can always offer those items to another individual just to see if that engagement opens up for you just remember that breaking the ice is very difficult but it is absolutely a crucial step in helping those in need always consider your uncomfortableness as a way in which your body is telling you that something is going on and that you have identified a need we want to encourage you to lean into that a little bit and remember that those interactions will become a bit more relaxed the more you encounter them so moving on to the third step is building a rapport and when we talk about building rapport what we mean is building trust and so we want to move from kind of that surface level conversation to a little bit more deep or more complex conversation so we're going to give you four easy ways to do that pretty quickly this again is where we kind of looked at retail research so i was really interested in this as someone who has been working in the mental health field for over 10 years um to see that we were utilizing retail research for some of these very basic connecting engagements that we have with people so the first one is courteous behavior obviously just being kind and friendly being unexpectedly honest and authentic with people so a lot of times we'll ask people hey how's your day going and we'll say oh i'm good i'm fine i'm doing well um you know think about the last time you maybe asked that question and someone said i'm not really doing that great um you know i'm kind of struggling with this or i'm really tired because you know my child is sick and they were up for six hours in the middle of the night last night and we just don't tend to do that and so try to try to exhibit that with other people and so the more that we're honest with people about the way that maybe we're feeling when they ask us the more likely that they'll be honest with us when maybe they're struggling with something as well obviously showing empathy um and seeking to understand things from another person's perspective um is very helpful and can quickly build rapport as well again finding common ground so you know interest similarities maybe you have friends in common you know always say at mississippi state if i'm engaging with someone who is maybe here on this campus maybe an employee or a student we always have msu in common with each other so we can always talk about how do we feel like things are going here or how do we feel about the fact that they're paving the road that's blocking all the traffic or whatever it is and whatever we have to do to kind of find that commonality and again connecting you know being friendly and helping a person feel not alone and may be feeling more supported the biggest one here though is uncommonly attentive and it's typically where we spend the most time when we do these presentations in person we do a lot of examples of you know utilizing technology and we'll pull out cell phones and we'll do all kinds of things with this but the best way to explain this to you is to think about the ways in which we as humans are really bad at paying attention to one another so just think for a few seconds about the ways in which we whether we've engaged in the activity or not how are we really bad at paying attention to one another typically that's things like listening to answer or listening to respond if you've ever been talking to someone about maybe some things that they're experiencing in their life and you start talking as soon as they stop talking they're gonna know that you're not really inputting that information in or maybe you're not really listening to them maybe you were just kind of listening to respond immediately one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the times people don't want us to fix their problem a lot of the times we're not able to fix their problems or concerns sometimes they just need us to be quiet and listen and so technology is another way that we're really bad at paying attention to one another when folks used to go out and eat in restaurants all the time you know you may go out and you see four people sitting at a table together and maybe they're all on their cell phones at the same time and we've all been guilty of it no judgment we've all done it and we'll probably all do it again but just think about the way in which that changes the engagement that you have that are that with the people that you're with and so i'm not asking you to never use your cell phone again you know wherever it is that you are but maybe next time you're engaging with people think about how that technology is impacting the relationship building process and so um you know i wear an eye watch and one thing i always like to do is if i'm meeting with clients is i will take it off because i know that clients can see when my watch lights up or when something's coming up on it or when it's vibrating or you know whatever it's doing and so think about the ways in which we also distract other people from conversations you know a lot of the times people will put their cell phones upside down on the table but there's still something distracting about it even being visible so just think about the ways in which maybe you want to engage a little bit differently when you're engaging with folks who may be experiencing distress think for a few seconds about some things that everyone can connect about so no matter your age where you're from your educational level your interests or hobbies think about two or three things that every single person can utilize to connect with each other so music and food are two things that you can always use to connect with people you know i say even our little list of people who can't even communicate really can tell you if they like a song or not um typically they'll cover their ears or they'll plug their ears or kind of like put their head down if they don't like the music or they'll dance to it and so you know one thing that i've encouraged before is maybe you allow your students to to bring their favorite song in to your classroom so maybe you know maybe once a week when you're doing whatever kind of opening time you are for the week you allow you know if you have young students and you have like a student of the week maybe that's something you ask them to bring in this may be their favorite song then maybe you can play that for your class because chances are there's probably at least five or six other students in your class that also really like that song and so that's going to help them build a connection um same thing with food i love pickles and typically from from my experience people either love pickles or hate pickles but the reality is is that if you hate pickles we can talk about why that is you know is it too sour are they is it too much vinegar you know do you not like the crunch like what is it about pickles that you don't like um and then i can tell you all of the reasons why i love pickles and how i think they're delicious and so two things that you can always use um i have a friend who carries around um those dum-dum suckers and so again like mentioned before like the peppermints are gone these are things that you can utilize to maybe offer to people to just kind of open up that conversation and invite someone into a conversation so a few ways to build rapport in your classroom so some good things that we have seen are those colored sticky notes to indicate how students are feeling and so if you've not seen this i want to encourage you to spend some time googling or looking on youtube and the way educators have utilized that and so what they'll do is they'll have students write their names maybe on the back of a colored sticky note and they will have them place it on say a dry erase board you know somewhere in the classroom or wherever these sticky notes will stay just to kind of indicate where they are and what they're feeling that day and so you may have three or four different sections you know i feel great today i feel sleepy today i feel tired today i feel you know whatever kind of titles you want to use and then allow your students to move those sticky notes throughout the day as they as they may wish to do so so one encouragement is to not have the students place their names on the front of those sticky notes maybe they have like a little number that indicates maybe their number in the class or just just a number indicator um and allow them to move it because what it will do is it will give your entire class a visual experience about the ways in which everyone in the classroom is feeling that day you know if 90 of your classroom is really not feeling great that day and really isn't feeling into it maybe you can take five minutes to just kind of talk about where everyone is you know maybe the temperament of the classroom in the field of the classroom that day um i really love things like that where where the class can start to build rapport with each other but it's also going to show students hey everybody's not always as okay as they seem or look and it's also going to give individuals who who you may feel like are always fine um you know an indication of maybe when they aren't another thing is an i connect game and so the way you play that game is is you have maybe say one student stand up and give an example of something that they really like so they may stand up and say i really like pickles and so the idea is that you would wait until another student in the class says i connect with that they also really like pickles and then that individual would say something that they really like maybe they would say i really like to play football and then you would wait for a student to kind of connect with that and so on and so forth until everyone in the classroom has kind of been able to connect with something it's not only going to connect your students but it's also going to make your students kind of think about hey what do i like to do and what do the what do my peers like to do as well and so we have sometimes we have large classrooms and so people can kind of feel like i'm the only person that likes anime no one else in here is going to like that and so i'm not ever going to say anything about that because people will you know think of me in a particular way and that's just not the truth when we're thinking about large classrooms there's always going to be someone else in the classroom whether they'll admit it or not um then that enjoys that as well and so just thinking of ways that you can kind of build those connections within your classroom maybe you have your students lead a small discussion about different feeling words each week and so you know just kind of expanding your students emotional vocabulary when i meet with clients i do not allow them to use those four or five main feeling words so i don't allow them to use happy sad angry or stressed i don't allow them to use those words and so one thing that i have found doing this work though is that a lot of people just don't have an expansive emotional vocabulary and so maybe you want to print out something like a feelings will to have in your class as well so when you're asking students kind of how they're doing today um it gives them a lot of different various options to maybe choose from so maybe they're feeling frustrated and angry but maybe it's that they're kind of feeling betrayed by friends and that's really the emotion feeling word that they're actually experiencing is that betrayal allow open classroom assignments occasionally so one thing um that i've seen a few educators do is i know you can't do this with major exams but maybe just have some open classroom assignments where everyone is encouraged to kind of help everyone so your students are teaching each other but they're also asking each other questions and so it kind of builds this support idea throughout your classroom that anyone can help me and i can ask anyone for help reward with verbal praise and encourage your students to do the same and so it's okay for you to allow your students to encourage each other in the classroom and maybe verbally praise someone so if you have a student who is really struggling with something um and maybe they're getting some help from some of their peers you want those folks who have been helping them and supporting them to feel like they can verbally praise when maybe a student gets a concept or idea that maybe they've struggled with and sharing how you feel when appropriate obviously as the educator you know you're not going to walk in every day and say i feel really sleepy because my child was awake for six hours last night but when appropriate you know be a role model for them and show them it's okay to talk about how you feel it's okay to be honest with your students that maybe you aren't feeling the greatest that day you know and maybe the way in which that's impacting you as appropriate so protective factors um these are going to be things that you're looking for um that make life worth continuing and so these are going to be things that you want to talk to people about that make them feel grounded and make them feel like their life is worth living and so you want to look at things like connectedness to family or friends you know do these individuals who are experiencing distress feel like they have friends that they can talk to or family that they feel like they can talk to maybe a connectedness within the school or a job and so are your students that are experiencing this are there teachers that they trust you know do you have co-workers that you feel connected to when you're experiencing distress and so with the example earlier we saw that that student really wanted to be with you instead of going to their biology class that afternoon and so while for you that may often be frustrating or just kind of overwhelming for you that really communicates to you something about the way in which that student perceives you the way maybe they respect you they may trust you they may feel safe with you and so definitely don't take that lightly pets are also another great way that um you know individuals feel worthy at times you know i myself have personally had friends who have gotten dogs just because they felt like they needed something to rely on them to keep them going and so you know individuals who have pets one thing that we see a lot when individuals are contemplating suicidal behavior is that they will consider taking their pets to local animal shelters and a lot of times people will ask me you know why would they do that and you know a brief example is if i called my sister today and asked her to come get my 15 year old chihuahua she would have a lot of questions about that um she would you know that would definitely be a red flag for her and it would definitely give her an indicator that something was going on and so definitely be watching um you know mainly for maybe your adult peers and family members um you know individuals may be giving away their pets or trying to find new homes for their pets not always a terrible thing sometimes individuals move and they're not allowed to have you know animals or particular types of animals but it's always better to check in than to kind of ignore something like that do these individuals have a partner or children in the home do they have ideas of meaningful ways that they can cope with stress you know do they have a good set of coping strategies that they can pull from or are they kind of lost at what they enjoy or what hobbies that they have in this period of time as well and a positive world view you know what does this individual's world view at the time you know is it is it negative is it you know kind of depressive or is it kind of still positive one way i always talk about that you can kind of assess this is to ask an individual if there's an event coming up that they're looking forward to and i think that we all could have an answer to that right now um one way to to kind of think about this a little bit more is if an individual is not able to give you an answer to that maybe you ask them you know is there something that you were doing maybe before the pandemic that you're looking forward to doing again and so i know that a lot of our coping skills and the way in which we have all maybe typically handled stress or dealt with stress has kind of been removed from our lives over the last year and so some of us are really looking forward to maybe going to sporting events maybe going on particular vacations again for myself i was not able to go to the beach last year and i don't think that i initially was able to see the impact that that had on me but about february this year i was certainly able to see um that that's a vacation that i've always gone on and that i definitely need to be able to do that and so if that if individuals that you're engaging with are not able to answer that question that's going to give you a pretty good indication of maybe where their risk level is and so again not an exhaustive list but just some things that you can kind of talk about and look for when engaging with individuals in distress perfect so let's move on in our action plan and let's see how we can help so after we have identified distress we've broken the ice with that individual we've built rapport with them our next step is to share information and make a plan so during this stage of helping someone after you've listened fully to that person you've gotten a sense of what the problem is you start thinking about okay what are the needs and we've talked about mental health but it does not have to be that maybe this young person just needs academic support or social support networking or some other type of support it's figuring out what things would be helpful for that person and making a plan with them to make that happen so keep in mind that sometimes we think that people need different things than they think that they need for themselves so make sure you ask them what they feel they need in that moment or if they can think of anything that would be helpful for them this will allow them to be more open and more trusting to the resources or opinions that you give to them in progression of the conversation so ideally it's good to have a warm handoff so that you want to be with that person as much as possible and even go with them if you can but if nothing else just maybe you could say you know let's even call together just make an appointment together so i know that it's all set and we don't you don't have to worry about it by yourself later and ask that person what would you consider your biggest struggle at this time or another great question to ask them is if you could add or subtract something from your life right now what would it be and these answers will give you an indication of what is going on for that individual and whether or not more immediate intervention is needed and you may not be able to help them at that time but you will understand a lot more of what they're going through so let's move now into a little bit of safety planning and so i like to talk about this because i feel like safety planning is something that individuals feel like they need to have a mental health degree for or they need to be in the mental health field to be able to do it um but i want to assure you that a lot of suicide prevention um a lot of the times we try to again over intellectualize it and it does not have to be super complicated and so these four steps of safety planning are the same things that i as a mental health clinician would do with engaging with someone who may be experiencing suicidal ideations or intentions and it's something that you as an educator can do it's something that you as a friend or family member can do with people um therapyaids.com or just a quick google search of safety plans we'll give you a lot of great templates you can print them out it will give individuals kind of an image of their safety plan you know they can take it with them and have it with them always but the first step that you kind of want to work through with people is knowing when to find help and that's going to go all the way back to identifying distress you want to help individuals learn how to identify their own distress you know so what are the warning signs when you begin thinking of suicide or when you feel very distressed you know is it that someone begins to yell or you know maybe it's a particular smell maybe it's a particular image that people see or maybe even particular moves so i know a lot of individuals struggle um in the winter time and so if you know that you struggle in the wintertime or you struggle with um seasonal affective disorder you can kind of prepare for that you know that that time and that season is coming every year and if you know that that's an issue for you you can kind of start to engage in step two and step two is just looking at individuals coping skills you know what can you do by yourself to take your mind off of the problem or what obstacles might there be to using these coping skills so for me i love to attend mississippi state sporting events if that's a coping skill that i have that's been really problematic for me to utilize over the last year and so i've had to become a little bit more creative and engaged in different coping skills to find ones that work for me right now and those change you know the coping skills that your 16 year olds in your school use right now are not going to be the same when they're 25 or 26 and so it's okay to talk with individuals about hey these coping skills that you have that are working really well for you may change in the future it doesn't mean something is wrong if journaling becomes more distressing for you than beneficial for you if that's something you use right now and it works really well so thinking about um you know just a vast toolbox of coping skills that you can use and always encouraging people to try things that they haven't tried before you know maybe it's just going out and looking at nature maybe it's beginning you know to maybe do some visual meditation um maybe it is riding a bike maybe it's trying a new activity or sport anything that an individual may be able to engage in to kind of help when when those um suicidal feelings or distressing feelings start coming up the third step is socializing with friends and family and so here you're going to encourage individuals if they're maybe unable to deal with their distress or their mood alone who is it that's a part of their life that they can contact who are the trusted family members or friends that they have that they can engage with maybe when the coping skill is not enough this can be really difficult say if it's one or two o'clock in the morning so you want to make sure that if you're engaging with individuals who may be awake during those hours hey what are you going to do if maybe you cannot call your grandmother at 3am you know what's who is next or you know what what kind of engagement do you want to make with something else if you're not able to get in contact with these people again listing several people in case your first choices aren't available and then the last step is contacting professionals or just agencies for additional support so contacting local professionals or emergency services if needed on if the distress continues um to increase so these are just four ways again that you can just talk people through what to do when they start feeling distressed i have found that individuals having their own safety plans really provides them a lot of autonomy in the way that they engage with their distress but it also gives kind of like a visual reminder of hey when i start to feel this way let me go to this thing and kind of remind myself of what it is i need to do in this moment i always encourage sometimes um you know if you print this out say you print this out and you work through it with someone and they take it home with them always encourage hey take this to maybe your bathroom window or maybe you know right beside your bed or something because there is something about being able to visually see a safety plan and be able to refer to it at any time that can really serve as its own protective factor um especially if individuals are able to see the people that they really care about and that they trust um you know just kind of hanging on their bathroom mirror that that alone can be enough sometimes to get people through those moments so if you have any questions again about safety planning you know we're definitely open to answer those questions as well so something that we love to talk about are the barriers and what prevents individuals from using the skills they learn in suicide prevention trainings so two things that we hear often are well what if i mess up and what if i just make it worse so one thing that can assist in this is just being direct and owning if you make a mistake this ownership alone will work to rebuild any rapport that may be jeopardized if you make a perceived mistake this may be if you go up to someone you say yeah i do not understand why you are struggling you're a 4.0 student and have everything in front of you and you're doing great it's fine remember that these statements are not very validating for what someone may be experiencing and are not supportive responses our intention is not to make someone justify whether or not their concerns are legitimate or rational these are their current lived experiences you may notice a look on their face and realize and say you know let me take that back and let me try to start over because that wasn't very understanding of me and i want to start over and try to actually understand what is going on and that was me assuming that things would be okay would you be willing to tell me what's going on with you and what are your struggles so try to show interest and be non-judgmental as well one thing you would really not want to say is you wouldn't do anything stupid would you because this is a statement that can come up easily but it is always taken as judgmental when you think about it another thing too that is absolutely not helpful is being sworn to secrecy on anything because then how are you going to tell people that need to be told if you have agreed to this don't let yourself get caught in the trap of being sworn to secrecy if someone asks you about that you may say i cannot promise that i can keep this to myself it depends on what you tell me but what kind of what i can tell you is that i am always in your corner and i'm not going to try and make things harder for you but we may need to tell someone and link you to people who are appropriate depending on what you tell me i'm asking for your trust and that i'm not going to try to make things worse for you but if i need to i may need to link you to those that can help better and also with being sworn to secrecy most of you are probably mandated reporters and you may want to tell them that upfront as well so acknowledging your mistakes instead of just saying i'm sorry can be really beneficial in situations where you need to rebuild rapport or show someone that you are genuinely apologetic think about how many times in your life you've heard the phrase i'm sorry it's likely in the thousands at this point what we want from people is to know that they know they hurt our feelings therefore if you want to reduce the amount of resistance and defensiveness you may apologize without ever even saying the word sorry we just want to challenge you to start practicing apologizing with context so that you're comfortable doing this when needed for example you may say something like hi sam i wanted to let you know that i've been thinking about our meeting the other day and i've been considering my behaviors during that conversation i'm not sure that i heard you out and i'm not sure that you felt heard i just wanted to speak about that if you're willing and let you know that i recognize that you may have felt dismissed that type of apology works almost every time as it gives context and explanation to why you're actually sorry people really appreciate the honesty if you mess up it's amazing how much leeway you can get from just owning it these are some other national resources that you know you may encourage other people to utilize these are resources that your students can use your co-workers can use at any time the national suicide prevention lifeline number is here most of you have probably seen this number before some of you may know that that number is going to be changed to a three-digit number the last i heard the hope for that is june 2022 so about a year from now is the hope that that number will be changed to just 988 i believe there's a text line if you're not familiar with the text line it's 741741 and that is a number that anyone can text at any time it does not matter how old you are or what day or time it is you just text that number you say hello or something along those lines and an individual will be able to engage with you on that line i encourage individuals to utilize this a lot i also encourage you to maybe save that number in your phone as a contact so when you're engaging with someone who may be experiencing distress maybe you can just shoot that number to them um the last thing you want to do is kind of be stuck with having to google um you know the best hotlines or helplines for people regarding whatever it is that they're experiencing and so i actually have all of these numbers saved in my home as contacts so that they're easily accessible if needed um the sexual assault hotline is listed here as well the disaster the stress helpline is going to be for individuals who may be experiencing anything that's related to natural disasters or shelter and food security so maybe a house fire may be flooding maybe a tornado we see those a lot here in mississippi or any other kind of disaster that may occur um this hotline helpline can help people get to resources where they can kind of find maybe shelter and food and kind of assist with the process of individuals getting back on their feet the transgender lifeline and the trevor project helpline are helplines for individuals who identify within the lgbtq plus communities and it's helpful when you are maybe sharing these resources with people to kind of know that those lines are operated by individuals that identify in those communities so that really provides an extra layer of safety and security for individuals who may be a little bit nervous about reaching out to those helplines so the mississippi department of mental health every county has a community mental health center as well as private practice clinicians within your communities and other kind of mental health resources that are available within your communities in central mississippi there is a lot of resources they're not always accessible for everyone they all provide different resources um but the department of mental health is always a great place to start if you're just trying to find out you know what does the department offer where should we be referring individuals and so we have just a brief video about that [Music] people going to prices every day i've been invited to supportive practice before if you have any mental health related issues no matter what that may be then there are people out there who want to help you the crisis stabilization unit is a place where individuals who have a mental health crisis can come destabilize a short-term residential life we provide of course mental health care to individuals who have serious mental illness we also provide mental health services to individuals who may have adjustment disorders or are just having a bad day occasionally people can come to the crisis center through a number of we get referrals from law enforcement from medical providers from our mental health centers but individuals can also just come to the crisis center our goal is to make mental health care accessible an effort to expand community crisis services the department of mental health started funding these brands for mobile prices starting in 2014. there are trained professionals who can provide the benefit of coming to you at the location of the prices to resolve that crisis and also to link people to services so the first thing you would do is you would call the mobile prices phone number and that phone is going to be answered by a master's level clinician who is going to just ask a couple of questions just to kind of get some background information about exactly what's going on any reciprocating defense any triggers we do partner with our local law enforcement agency who we have several cit trained officers crisis interventions and training officers who are trained to assist us in de-escalation in us in a safe manner but then we will need an address so that we can go to the location of where the person is experiencing the crisis one of the things that i think these teams have done for the state is it has diverted individuals from unnecessarily being placed in psychiatric institutions and unnecessarily being placed in jail because with mobile crisis response teams they are linked to services in the community and they can remain in their community and function i know that sometimes it's scary to reach out for help and people are not sure who to call or when to call or where to call but to make people more comfortable i would definitely encourage you to call if you even have a question about someone who is in a mental health practice or could be potentially in a mental health crisis there are crisis centers that are located around the state of mississippi the crisis centers are for the most part part of community mental health providers so a local community mental health center has a crisis center that they refer people to so you can really access the crisis center no matter where you are we are available in 24 hours a day seven days a week you never know when a crisis is going to happen you cannot ever prepare it but i'm gonna have a crisis tomorrow so we provide that support you see people at their worst when they come in and i have the opportunity to get them stabilized and have them ready to go home in the course of about a week so here are the numbers for each county throughout the state of mississippi for the mobile crisis response teams as well and so the mobile crisis response teams are also teams that can be utilized if there is a crisis that maybe you need additional assistance with your educational team certainly is aware of most of these but also keeping in mind you know you know people that live probably throughout the state and so you know you have the access now to the resource of you know if something happens over in clark county with someone that you know you'll be able to access this number as well to be able to get those individuals some assistance that they will need so the department of mental health in mississippi also provides children specific related services and we'll share a brief video about those as well our health and wellness is not just our physical health our mental health and physical health work hand in hand mental health problems can affect anyone no matter their gender race or age young people are not immune from mental health problems anxiety and depression are among the most diagnosed mental health issues in children there's always hope and recovery is possible children and youth services are available statewide young people with serious emotional disturbances can receive wraparound facilitation as well as receive support through their local math teams more services and supports for mississippi children youth and their families are available than ever before for information about services near you visit mental health ms.com or call the mississippi department of mental health helpline at 1-877-210-8513 now we're just going to share several other resources that you may be able to utilize as well so there's a mississippi suicide hotline and that number is listed here um a specific line related to the department of mental health headline um there's a students against violence um website that i really like um and that you may want to share with your students and so it's a website that your students can go on and get more educational information about bullying or just violence in general it will show them ways in which they can help one another things to look for in their peers as well and a partnership for drug free kids and so this is a helpline if you've got you know students who may be struggling with substance use or abuse who may want to reach out and get some confidential help as well and then we've also included the website here as well so we'll leave this slide up for just a few seconds in case you maybe want to take a screenshot of this slide in order to get those websites two other resources that i really like that we typically um share with young people is the national youth crisis line um so it's just kind of a broad national line that you are able to utilize it's just something different than the national suicide prevention lifeline and then the team line also has a website as well that i really encourage all individuals who engage with you to kind of engage with maybe get some resources from i know a lot of educators are getting some informational sheets from this website and just utilizing with their students maybe hanging in their classrooms talking about different things and this is a non-profit organization it's a community-based one that provides emotional support to youth they just want to provide peer-based education and support before problems become a crisis and so it's a lot of information from youth to other youth and so it uses a lot of their language their verbiage um and we've seen that just the connectability piece is really helpful with teams in order to be able to i'm just engaged with one another but also um if we give them this big national lifeline website it can feel kind of overwhelming but if we give them something that says teen in it or you know the individuals on the website kind of look more their age um doing things that they may likely be doing as well um they're more likely to engage with it and spend time with the website and just kind of look around on it and so feel free to utilize any of these resources at any time and so you know and encourage your students to utilize them as well so finally we have gone through every step of our action plan we have talked about how to identify distress how to break the ice how to build rapport we talked about sharing information and making a plan and our final step in this action plan is the follow up so our interaction should not be over once we get that individual to the services that they need if you're able to follow up with them and ensure that they went to the appointment or whatever plan of action you were able to create with that person if they did not follow through that's okay ask them about the barriers of the limitations that they're experiencing so that you can continue to support them and how they need to be supported or you can get ongoing assistance and see if you can work out a way for them to get the help that they need and to follow through with that so be sure that you close the loop with just checking back in after your interaction and ensure that it was a successful referral i know that as educators you probably all have another plan of action in place as well for following up and rules and regulations that you have to follow if that's the case maybe just touch base with that young person in class or in the hallway um to just make sure that you follow up with them well so one last thing that we want to kind of address before we wrap up is this major question that kind of comes into play a lot about whether or not asking someone if they are feeling suicidal will contribute to them either becoming more suicidal or becoming suicidal if the answer to that was initially no and so we want to kind of talk about that for a few minutes and so it's this idea of fact or fiction of whether or not asking someone will will make them harm themselves and there have been a lot of studies done on this within within our youth populations college students and kind of across the lifespan um and the idea actually and honestly continues to be debunked it is actually fiction so it is not true that if we ask someone if they are considering harming themselves that that will encourage them to do it that they will be any more suicidal in that moment because you asked that question than they were before that there is some literature that shows that if you asked about suicide and youth when they were followed up with it actually led to a decreased risk so you're not going to contribute to them acting on those thoughts by asking them about suicide in fact individuals actually report that someone being honest and direct and truthful with them reassured them that their life was worth living and that they were noticed by others and so it actually is a protective factor when we ask individuals if maybe they're considering this or feeling particular ways um with that being said in this specific training model model of the alliance project you notice that we didn't focus a lot on teaching you about asking about suicide specifically which most other suicide prevention trainings do the alliance project feels that it's not really necessary for most of us to have to ask that question directly our goal is that ultimately if you feel concerned enough about someone that you need to ask them if they're feeling suicidal um you know we're not necessarily concerned as much with whether or not the answer is yes or no we want to get them to the appropriate resources regardless because a lot of the times what happens is we'll ask that question and people will get nervous and they'll say no i'm not feeling that way and we'll go great excellent and we can all kind of move on with our lives and so um you know and then we kind of walk away from the circumstance without providing them those resources that maybe they could utilize if the answer to that question was yes whether it be in that moment or whether it be two weeks from that moment and so just know that you're not going to contribute to someone being more suicidal by asking them about suicide specifically so some of you are going to be in settings where you need to ask about suicide and others of you won't be if you're in a setting where you will need to ask about suicide it's good to know that you're not going to cause any harm by doing so but you're also not going to do any harm by not asking about it directly and specifically we mentioned this again because this this fear is a huge barrier to getting people to implement these interventions that we've talked about and we know that an intervention is only as good as the adherence to it and so if we know about interventions but we don't use them or we don't adhere to them then they're not going to be useful for us you know if we're taught great skills in any aspect of life and we don't practice them or feel confident utilizing the skill we simply just won't engage in it and we'll start to feel less confident we'll start to feel um you know less able to have those um throughout some of our grant projects that we've done we've noticed in our data collection that over one third of individuals who have gone through training presentations report that they do not feel comfortable engaging in the skills that they have been taught and training presentations and so that's why we really like to focus on the scenarios and the skill building aspects of this because we do not want you to feel limited um or feel like that question is going to be a barrier for you in intervening with people so moving forward just know if you ask about suicide it's not a bad thing and it's not going to cause harm but it's also not always a necessary thing so thank you again for allowing us to go through the alliance training presentation with you today if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to our team my email is listed here as well as bobby joe's email we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have typically when we do this presentation live we spend a lot of time answering questions and working through more role plays and skill building activities and so we're happy to come do that at any time or answer any questions that you have and lastly this training presentation is available for any individual within the state of mississippi and so we do them face to face we do them virtually like this and then we also do them live virtually so if you're a part of a community organization or faith organization or the pta or anything like that that may be interested in just talking more about how to help people in distress in general we would love to come to your communities and offer these presentations for you and answer any questions that you may have perfect and also one last thing um miss martha hollingsworth is the one who has distributed this presentation to each of you she also should have distributed the instruction sheet to all of you there is a qualtric survey that is required for each of you to take after completing this training so once you finish this please use that instruction sheet that she gave you follow the link to the qualtric survey fill it out it helps us but also we give your name back to miss martha hollingsworth so she knows every person who actually completed the training so that's also one of the ways you will get your name on the list that you completed this training as well so thank all of you so much for attending we hope this was very beneficial for all of you don't forget to send us any questions that you may have thank you you

Channel: Fahd Bensaid

Views: 4,937

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Id: EQ4qOiEmO0U

Length: 101min 28sec (6088 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021