Mental health providers — often well-intended and fearful — have made suicide prevention complicated. “Clipboard counseling,” interrogation approaches and highly restrictive interventions have not worked. What if a 5-step, 30-minute intervention made a huge difference? What if we could train peers to help with firearm safety counseling? In this interview I speak with Veteran and psychologist Dr. Craig Bryan about his evidence-based “Crisis Response Planning” intervention…
Storytellers in suicide prevention have the power to shift culture and change the world in ways other stakeholders are not able to do. Our “voices of insight” have influence and shape others’ understanding on a deep level. People with lived experience seek to stand in solidarity with our research colleagues, policy champions and mental health professionals to embed our deep wisdom in a processes of partnership. In this podcast, I speak with the world renowned Bronwen Edwards, a global authority on the power of lived experience to drive large scale change in suicide prevention. We talk about how we can approach our partners — who may have different values, priorities and points of view — with “compassionate curiosity” so we can “collaborate the big collaboration” (instead of “fight the good fight”).
Critical suicidology is an emerging area of scholarship and advocacy that brings together expertise from diverse perspectives to re-examine all that we have believed to be “true” about suicide prevention. Critical suicidologists question the highly medicalized framework of understanding a suicidal person and see suicide in context by understanding how other frameworks — like social justice — expand our imagination on what is possible in prevention, intervention and postvention.
In this conversation with Jess Stohlmann-Rainey, we talk about the ways traditional efforts in suicide prevention have failed us including:
Forced treatment
Fear-based approaches of restraint and isolation
Trying to predict suicide risk
And instead explore alternative, creative and upstream approaches to suicide prevention such as transformative justice work, mutual aid peer support, and accountability in making reparations for histories of harm done to communities.
“Never trust a man who doesn’t drink,” John Wayne
From the Rat Pack to Animal House to Ernest Hemingway to John Wayne, many cultural icons of masculinity have glamorized the idea that booze puts hair on your chest.
Traditional American messages of masculinity teach boys to be lone wolves and to stuff down emotions. Feelings (except anger) then become taboo. This messaging creates a problem for boys and men who feel fear, grief, shame and more and don’t have role models on how to express these emotions openly. Instead, men often learn to take action when feeling these feelings by numbing emotions or distracting themselves with many forms of addictive behavior.
Traditional norms of masculinity also endorse ideals of self-control. Thus, despite high levels of substance use triggered by conflict, pain, and uncomfortable feelings, many men believe they can control their substance use well past the point of significant consequences in relationships, work and health. Because of this, they often wait until their use is causing catastrophic outcomes before they reach out to, or more typically accept others’ help.
Add to this dynamic the need for young people to experience “coming of age” rituals to make a shift from child to adult. For many young men and teens risky behavior around substances often fit the bill. Competition, fearlessness and invulnerability fuel increasingly dangerous pathways to addiction, especially for young adults who are genetically predisposed to have vulnerability to substance use disorders. In this podcast Rourke Weaver and I talk about how cultures of masculinity can fuel problems in addiction — and how they can also be leveraged powerfully when groups of men come together in recovery.
Our best bet in preventing suicide is to get in front of it.
Way in front.
Promoting protective factors not only will reduce the risk of suicide — it also is a great way to build a life worth living. In this podcast, I interview Captain Dena Ali about what we have learned about wellness at work from the fire service and the mitigating effects of social support, mindfulness and sleep. We also talk about the power of peer support to promote these buffering factors and how small interventions can go a long way. As you listen to Captain Ali, ask yourself, “How can these protective factors of the fire service be translated to other industries and workplaces?
While peer support and peer specialist efforts have long existed in areas of mental health communities and post-critical incidents, their role in suicide prevention has been more recent. Some feared that peer support might increase vulnerability through the “copycat” phenomenon. Others were concerned that suicide was just too complicated of an issue for peers to try to take on…
…In this interview I get the honor of chatting with Lt. John Coppedge, whom I met through the Denver Police Department’s Peer Support Program. Lt. Coppedge was a key leader in our “Breaking the Silence” video and training workbook with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Here he shares his journey about his own trauma history and how it has helped shape his passion for peer support.
Then we listened to the voices of people with lived experience with suicidal intensity who told us over and over that peers played an incredibly influential role in not only bringing them back from the brink, but giving them new reasons for living and hope. Peer supporters and peer specialists also told us that helping others helped them.
With high profile celebrity suicides dominating the headlines in June, the topic of suicide was on the mind of many. While we still have a ways to go to undo the misperceptions, prejudice and discrimination that surrounds suicide and suicidal intensity, we need move beyond just "raising awareness" in our efforts.
We need to take action.
“People don’t always need advice. Sometimes all they need is a hand to hold, an ear to listen and a heart to understand them.”
In this inspirational podcast I have the great honor of interviewing one of my most beloved social agitators, Eduardo Vega. Eduardo begins by sharing his own experiences with suicidal intensity and the “incomprehensible demoralization” he felt as he tried to escape himself. For him the turning point happened when he started to connect with something larger than himself by helping others. Eduardo talks at length on the podcast about the helper principle – in other words, the notion that helping others helps us. While the idea of peer support has long been promoted in addiction recovery and among mental health advocates, it is just now gaining traction in suicide prevention. Eduardo shares his view on why this is so, and gives us the science and the strategy for “the way forward.”
