On Tuesday afternoon, Andy Brown, the executive director of the Lawrence-based Headquarters Counseling Center, paced the boards of the small stage in the theater building at Allen Community College in Iola.
“How many people here have had conversations with folks in their personal circle, or with family members, about suicide?” asked Brown.
Of the roughly 20 individuals in attendance — ranging from area civic leaders to interested members of the general public — about half raised their hands.
SOME WAY into the program a woman in the middle row cleared her throat. “Personally,” she said, “my then 8-year-old — she’s 11 now — had mentioned suicide once. I completely freaked out. I had no idea what to do.”
Brown told her that while the notion isn’t entirely unheard of in a person that young, the mother was right to take it seriously. The youngest person to die by suicide in Kansas last year, he said, was just 10. But, he continued, the state is in a position — when the legislature returns from break — to pass a much-needed reform, the Jason Flatt Act, which would require suicide prevention training for school district personnel.
THE PLURALITY of victims, however, explained Brown — statistically speaking, at least — continue to be white men between the ages of 45 and 65 who have easy access to a firearm.
Another woman in the audience remembered her brother-in-law: “He was always talking about wanting to kill himself to get away from all the pain. I didn’t know at that point in time what to say to him. My husband and I went Christmas shopping one day. We came back two hours later, and he’d already made a path through the garage for them to take the gurney down. I mean, we hadn’t thought he was serious.”
THE EVENT WAS the first of two suicide prevention “gatekeeper training” courses organized on the day by the Allen County Substance Abuse Task Force, whose goal, in inviting Brown, was to equip members of the public with the tools to best help those bearing the weight of suicidal thoughts, who too often suffer in private.
“If what we want to have happen is a positive outcome for the person who’s feeling suicidal,” emphasized Brown, “then we want to have as many people in the community educated about the kinds of things they can do as a gatekeeper to help that individual.
“What we’re trying to do is to move that person from a conversation with you as a gatekeeper to a conversation with a mental health professional.”
BROWN URGED on the group, in their dealings with a potentially suicidal loved one or acquaintance, compassion, a knowledge of the facts about suicide, a commitment to listen to the sufferer and to not prejudge, and an awareness of the most sensitive language to use when communicating your concern.
“How we talk about suicide can have a big impact on treatment and prevention,” stressed Brown, whose organization fields calls for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in Kansas.
For instance, “[we] don’t use the phrase ‘committed suicide’ anymore” — a test this reporter failed in an article seven months ago — “because it is generally associated with somebody committing a crime.” Nor, continued Brown, do we use the word “stigma,” whose aura of disgrace or defect fails to capture the complex pattern of thinking that marks the man or woman who contemplates ending their life.
As for the popular idea that “suicide is a selfish act” — beyond its surface callousness, insisted Brown, it is simply incorrect. “The vast majority of people that die by suicide think of it as being a selfless act. I’m taking myself out of the picture. I’m a burden — my family will be better off when I’m gone.”
Even greater than the sins of vocabulary a population creates to describe its most anguished members, the almost total refusal to address the topic directly — often from a fear or discomfort, to be sure — is, according to Brown, a worse offense.
“It is not a topic we want to tiptoe around. Be direct in your speech. Ask the person if they are thinking about killing themselves.
