It’s slowly getting better, but talking about suicide and how to prevent and address it is still stigmatized. That’s the message from Diane Brice, program director for Suicide Prevention of the Central Coast, an organization based in Santa Cruz that services Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
“Our primary goal is to get the person who is not safe to call us,” Brice says.
That means a mostly-volunteer staff fields some 300 to 400 calls per month, some from people in crisis, others who just need to talk, and from people grieving for lost friends and family.
Suicide Prevention Services trains police and sheriff’s deputies on how to talk to people when investigating a suicide, which they have historically approached as crime scenes. Part of Brice’s work is shifting how we think about and talk about suicide—it’s not a crime, for starters, and it’s not even a mental health issue. It’s a health issue more generally.
About 30 percent of people who die from suicide have a diagnosed mental illness, and another estimated 20 percent are undiagnosed.
“Suicide cannot be one thing. It can be anyone, anywhere, anytime,” Brice says. “It’s about health. It’s about people dying.”
The Weekly has covered suicide from different angles, including struggles for veterans re-integrating into the community.
We aim to factually report stories that help understand how our public institutions address suicide.
That includes a health perspective, through stories on the County Health Department’s Behavioral Health Bureau, the newly designated trauma center at Natividad Medical Center.
It also means covering law enforcement and first responders and how they respond to suicide calls.
It also gets political, with reporting on the proposed End of Life Option Act, a pending bill that would allow terminally ill patients to end their own life with a prescription drug. This right has historically been called “assisted suicide,” but supporters are steering away from that term, instead calling it “death with dignity.”
Even the Associated Press stylebook the Weekly uses for guidance on matters like spelling and capitalization offers insight on how we use words to accurately write about suicide: “Avoid using committed suicide except in direct quotations from authorities. Alternate phrases include killed himself, took her own life or died by suicide. The verb commit with suicide can imply a criminal act. Laws against suicide have been repealed in the United States and many other places.”
For local resources, check out the website or Facebook page of Suicide Prevention of the Central Coast. Based in Santa Cruz, this nonprofit serves Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties in several ways.
Mental health professionals and trained volunteers are available 24/7 on a hotline (831-458-5300 or 1-877-663-5433). You can also call the national suicide prevention hotline (1-800-273-TALK). Calls are welcome from people in crisis, or who just need to talk.
FSA also provides peer support groups for people who are grieving for someone they’ve lost to suicide. Call 831-459-9373 for a schedule and meeting locations, or call the crisis line if you’d like to speak with someone 24/7.
FSA is always seeking new volunteers to support its suicide hotline. For information on volunteer trainings, call 831-459-9373.
“We create a safe space for them to tell us the truth of what’s going on with them. It’s an amazing process of being heard and connecting with the caller, and allowing the caller to say what they need to say,” Brice says.
Visit their suicide prevention website for a helpful list of warning signs and community outreach materials.
Below, you can find stories the Weekly has written pertaining to suicide. We aim to cover health issues, including suicide, that help tell the story of our community and public institutions’ responses to suicide.
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