SAYBROOK TOWNSHIP -- Dale Hawley is familiar with people in desperate situations.
As the secretary at the Samaritan House, Ashtabula County’s only homeless shelter, Hawley said the shelter does receive adolescents sometimes who are with their families.
“Obviously, the teens don’t want to be there, it is embarrassing to be homeless; many times their parents have mental and substance abuse issues as well as economic problems,” Hawley said. “I am here today to learn about teen suicide prevention. I would hate to have something happen at Samaritan House.”
Hawley was just one of more than 125 people who registered for the Adolescent Suicide Prevention Seminar Monday morning at Lakeside High School.
Lake Area Recovery Center and Signature Health Inc. joined in a collaborative effort to bring Dr. Paul Granello and Dr. Darcy Haag-Granello, counselor educators of Ohio State University to Ashtabula County. The free seminar was made possible through a grant from the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation in Columbus.
“There has been a lot of interest in providing training on suicide prevention, especially for preventing teen suicide, so we are very grateful for this collaboration and the grant,” said Kathleen Kinney, executive director of LARC.
Granello and Haag-Granello are no strangers to the real life effects of the suicide of a close loved-one. In 1999, Granello’s brother hung himself in a mental-health facility.
“It was at that moment in our life we changed the focus of our work,” Darcy Haag-Granello said. “We are ‘suicide survivors,’ the people who are left behind.”
The Granellos talked with various professionals to determine how much training in suicide prevention they actually received. The answer was less than an hour.
“So, we really started putting our efforts in suicide prevention,” she said.
“This is a hard topic to talk about. In reality, lots of people have suicide stories,” Haag-Granello said. “It is easier to ignore this topic and hope it goes away; I applaud you for coming today to learn.”
Eighty-nine Americans die each day by suicide and 12 Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 die each day by suicide, Paul Granello said.
“If that many people were dying everyday in an airplane crash people would be screaming and massive investigations would be launched, but because it is suicide and the stigma of mental health issues, people do not want to talk about it,” Granello said.
Granello gave six pervasive risk factors for potential adolescent suicide. They are mental disorders; substance abuse; high levels of family conflict; parental alcoholism and substance abuse; suicide within the family; and personality characteristics, including perfectionism, hopelessness, isolation and impulsive or aggressive tendencies.
Warning signs to keep in mind include: a noticed loss of energy; a change of eating habits or sleep patterns; a change in personality or behavior; withdrawal and alienation from support system; risk-taking behaviors; mood swings; depression, hopelessness and despair; and verbal cues.
“Kids will verbally tip off what they are contemplating, because what they really want is help,” Granello said.
For more information, look online at www.suicidology.org
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