Banding together

EOWYN LEMAY IVEY Frontiersman reporter

About 120 people attend Valley suicide prevention conference

WASILLA — Show you care. Ask the question. Get help.

These are the primary steps in preventing youth suicide, according to a keynote speaker at a conference in Wasilla last week. And a group of Valley residents is committed to getting that message out.

During an all-day conference organized by Burchell High School, more than 100 school nurses, counselors, mental-health professionals, teachers and parents of suicide victims met to look for ways to stop an apparent epidemic of suicide among Mat-Su youths.

At least nine and as many as a dozen Mat-Su teens have taken their own lives during the past 18 months.

Around 120 people attended last week's free conference, funded by a federal grant. In the end, a group of attendees formed a local committee with sights set on creating a suicide prevention plan.

"We're really excited about the level of commitment," said Diane Demoski, school nurse at Burchell High.

The conference started out with keynote speaker Dr. Brooke Randell, the director of prevention programs for the Reconnecting Youth Prevention Research Program and a research professor at the University of Washington.

During the morning session, Randell presented a statewide plan to prevent suicide, which she helped implement in Washington during the past several years. She also provided data from her own research having to do with teen suicide.

Washington's plan included a media campaign which focused on showing teens that you really care by listening to what they say, asking them if they have considered hurting themselves and finding help for them — "Show you care. Ask the question. Call for help."

Randell also addressed some of the barriers to prevention, such as a community-wide fear of talking about suicide and a lack of awareness that there is even a problem.

"You need to deal with these things in order to bring people on board," she told the group.

Randell also discussed the political and financial hurdles that make a preventive program difficult. But in the end, she emphasized that even taking an hour or so to talk with a teen-ager honestly and compassionately can make a difference.

Following Randell's presentation, around 20 conference attendees met for an afternoon session which ended with the formation of local committee.

"Everyone agreed we wanted to come up with a suicide prevention plan for the Valley," Demoski said.

She said the next steps will be to research grant options and look at what various agencies are already doing that could fit into a community-wide plan.

Wasilla resident Joann Biesemeyer attended the conference and is a member of the new committee. She said she and other parents of suicide victims are among those who will be dedicated to the cause, but she added that the effort has to come from the entire community.

"I think everyone needs to be involved," she said.

Biesemeyer said she found the conference interesting, but at times difficult as well. She said a strong stigma is attached to those who commit suicide, and to their surviving family members as well. But she said she feels the survivor's perspective is an important one to include.

"Until you have been there, no one truly knows what it is like," she said of losing a loved one to suicide.

The suicide prevention committee will have its first official meeting on Feb. 1 at Burchell High School.

Biesemeyer and other survivors of a loved one's suicide have also formed a support group, which will meet from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Feb. 19 at the Trinity Barn on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway.