Ask a Question and Save a Life

By Kayleigh Lepage 

            Jessica Green, member of Health and Wellness here at Stonehill College, offered her tips on prevention of suicide.

            Last Friday, Green presented a slideshow to show how to prevent suicide and how to help someone who could be potentially going through it. She used a method called QPR that stands for Question, Persuade and Refer.

            QPR is not intended to be counseling or treatment, it is intended to offer help.

            This QPR method allowed anyone who is helping someone with suicidal thoughts by providing and allowing them to ask questions, to persuade any thoughts and/or advice, and to refer to anyone who can also help.

            “The more you hear things the more likely it’s what the person is thinking,” Green said.

            Green shared some statistics on the background of suicide, which included:

·      Suicide is the number one cause of death in youth

·      Mostly freshman in college or high school are adapted to suicide because of the amount of pressure

·      Social media is the number one cause of suicide

·      Massachusetts has the lowest suicidal rates because of all the resources available

Community, family and friends and individual skills are ways that people with suicidal thoughts can be protected.

Community includes people, faculty, coaches, residence life, or campus ministers. Involvement with programs on campus such as Anti-Bullying will increase your protection from suicidal thoughts.

Green emphasized that family and friends, loving relationships and faith, and individual skills such as coping skills, attitudes, and life experiences are very important when protecting someone from suicidal thoughts.

During this presentation, the audience was asked to play roles, one as an RA, and one as a student who is thinking about committing suicide.

After hearing conversations from the left and right, people who were playing the RA had a very tough time as to what to say to the person who is thinking about suicide.

This was Green’s motive, to get people to understand how hard it could be to be there for someone is suicidal thought.

After doing a second exercise, the audience found that it was much easier to know what to say to be able to help the person.

The audience was taught direct verbal cues such as, “I’m going to kill myself” or “I wish I were dead,” along with indirect verbal cues such as, “pretty soon you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

We were also taught, to ask “have you been unhappy lately?” instead of just coming out and saying “you’re not thinking of ending your life are you?” Saying indirect cues will lead to more disclosure and more isolation and will increase the thought of suicide.

Green made sure that we understood the behavioral cues involved that could lead someone to attempting suicide. These cues contained previous suicide attempt, isolation from family, friends, teachers or coaches, and/or an increase and drug and alcohol abuse.