Joining me now to share more on how to talk about suicide and ways we can all help prevent it, is Alan Mednick, and you are a suicide prevention manager with the southeast for Livingworks education.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Thank you so much for doing this.

You are brave.

And you have your own personal story, but you're here to talk more about what you're doing with this organization.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah.

First of all, I want to mention suicide is a tough subject.

And, you know, although it is a tough subject, suicide is preventable and there's hope.

And through livingworks, what we do is we try to provide the hope to do it and what we how we do that is through teaching people how to identify if somebody is in crisis to the point where we take them to, uh, you know, recognizing that they want help and reaching out to help, to reach them, to connect to somebody to get that help.

So that's one avenue we do it through, and there's another avenue where we take it to what we call a turning point.

And that turning point basically brings out the life in someone and says, I want to live.

And at that point we help them develop a plan.

So that's what we do.

And we do this through trainings.

Livingworks is the global leader in suicide prevention trainings.

I've been around for 40 years doing that, and that's basically how we do it through the trainings.

(Arlene) Well, it's a tough topic to talk about, especially if you are the one, you know, perhaps hiding these feelings.

And this could be anyone from your family or even a coworker.

And I can imagine if you know your coworker is going through something tough, or maybe you just notice they're acting different, maybe more reserved.

I mean, how do you open up this conversation at work?

(Alan) Yeah, that's actually a really good question.

The first thing we want to do is we want to be able to identify what we call invitations.

Invitations are what you see, hear, sense and learn in somebody that says, I need help.

I'm in crisis.

People, you know have the will to live and that will usually speaks is how does it speak to you?

So, you know, what do you see in somebody?

Are they giving things away?

Are they saying things I don't want to live anymore?

It doesn't matter.

There's a lot of different avenues that people go into to tell you that they're in crisis.

A lot of people don't see those.

And that's where the issue comes.

And that's why these trainings are so important.

(Arlene) They are.

And there's higher risk groups.

But anyone can really be going through this tough time.

You see, you know, higher risk groups with LGBTQ youth.

But that doesn't mean that someone else, you know may not be suffering as well.

Talk to us a little bit more about that.

What are maybe some risk factors or things to look out for.

(Alan) You know, it's pretty interesting because in the training we actually go through this and we talk about what events, what groups, what things do you learn about somebody that could say that they're in crisis?

And obviously we know veterans, we know LGBTQ, um, we know, like, you know, American Indians, you know, things like this.

The Native Americans, things like this are people that have a higher risk.

But what I want to say is, like, my parents had diabetes, my father had diabetes.

I go to the doctor to get checked out for diabetes.

Okay.

Obviously I have a higher risk for it.

But if nobody in my family had diabetes, should I just ignore it and say I'll be fine, I'll never have diabetes.

It's the same thing here.

We don't want to miss the signs of somebody.

If we're saying that somebody is not in this group or somebody's not in these events that have happened to them, that they're going to be fine, that there's no cause we're going to miss the signs, and that's what we don't want to do.

(Arlene) And that segways into myths about suicide.

Tell us a little bit more about that.

(Alan)So one of the myths that we talk about when we we identify that somebody is in crisis, we want to ask them straight forward.

You know, sometimes when people are going through losing a job, financial troubles, maybe other things that they're thinking about suicide.

Are you thinking about suicide?

People feel that if I say that word suicide and you're not suicidal, then it's going to give you the thought of it.

It doesn't.

We know that research shows that that's one of the big myths.

And it's really important to say that word.

It connects with the people.

Um, the other myth is that you have to be a mental health counselor.

And again, we actually I actually tell people during the trainings that you got to take that mental health counselor off because we don't have time to analyze somebody.

We don't have time to go through all these steps.

That's for afterwards, after they realize that they want to live.

Right now, we just got to get you to what we call stay safe for now.

And that's where we want to get at this right moment.

Right now, when somebody is in crisis, crisis, we want them to be safe for right now.

(Arlene)And how do the symptoms or risk factors or things to look out for present different in adults, teens, children.

(Alan) So you know that's a real interesting question because what I usually tell people is any change in anybody antibody is a sign if you have somebody that changes.

For instance, I mean, you would obviously think that somebody is outgoing, very, you know, happy go lucky calls everybody and all of a sudden they're isolated.

That's a sign, right?

Right.

But what if somebody is really reclusive and doesn't really talk to a lot of people and is shy?

But now all of a sudden they're going out there and they're talking to everybody, right?

Can that be a sign?

Yeah.

Any kind of changes that go on in anybody but with kids you see a little bit more, it's a little bit tougher because obviously they're going to school.

If you have grades that are declining usually they're an A student.

Now they're getting D's and F's.

They're not doing their homework.

Things like that could be signs.

Typically we say if it's two weeks or longer.

If it lasts for two weeks longer, that's where the signs come in.

But we don't want to ignore anything either.

And it's really important.

The other thing I just want to bring up with kids and it happened with me, with my son, my son struggle.

He has anxiety and depression and we saw him sleeping more.

Hey, he's a teenager.

He's going through those, those times.

And that's what you kind of miss, too.

Um, it actually took three of his friends at one point to let us know that he was really struggling.

And because of those friends, we were able to bring him to help and get him into a facility.

Um, and they basically saved his life.

(Arlene) What a blessing.

And, you know, the impact of approaching someone who loves that person.

In that case, how is it that you suggest to people to intervene or to help or get involved?

What is the right way to approach this conversation with someone who might be at risk?

(Alan) One of the things I always tell people is to be honest with somebody.

Never lie.

Never tell them that you could do something when you can't do it, and approach them in a direct way.

Again, if you know the person, ask them straight out, I know you.

I've seen these things changes in you.

Sometimes when people are going through that, they're thinking about suicide and ask them directly.

A lot of times what we want to do is we want to use our gut feelings.

We want if they, you know, if they tell us that nothing's wrong, use that gut feeling and you know, you know what and press them on it.

It's okay.

But just be honest with the person and direct with the person.

(Arlene)How would you do it with let's just say an adult.

And then how would you do that with a child or a teenager again?

(Alan) So it's done the same exact way.

You want to tell them the reason why you see these things going on.

You just don't want to come out and say, hey, what's going on with you?

You know, you got to have a back backing behind it to understand, they understand why you're asking them the question.

And it's just not something that you're saying out there.

Um, I also just want to mention, too, is that there are times when you might not be able to help that person because you're not in a good place, or you might be too close or emotional with the person, and that's okay.

But you don't want to leave that person just there and say, okay, I'm not in a good place, I'm going to walk away.

You want to be able to connect them to somebody that can could help them also at that point.

Right?

Um.

(Arlene) Yeah.

No, that makes perfect sense.

You're identifying someone maybe because you're also going through some things, and that's a tough thing.

There are resources out there.

But first, you know, is that a reason why you might not want to help that person personally?

Is there any other factor you know, into, you know, maybe referring someone to someone else.

Or there's.

(Alan)A lot of different reasons why you would do it for me.

Again, I'll go to my son.

I'm too emotionally close with him.

I did lose my daughter to suicide.

And because of that, I'm a little bit more sensitive of talking to him.

My wife's the strong one in the family, so that's good.

But when I recognize that something might be going on with him, I will talk to him.

I'll say something.

But then I have to get somebody to help me intervene with him.

(Arlene) What are the best resources for a mental health crisis?

Someone you know you want to help them or someone calling for their own help?

Yeah, there's a lot of good resources out there.

You could start off with 908 and 211.

The crisis unit there, the crisis hotline, um, again, 988 is a perfect resource to use.

There's other resources to go to.

Also, the mobile crisis unit is a phenomenal one.

There's one in each county in Florida.

The other thing is Nami and Afsp, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

You go to their websites and they have some phenomenal resources there, too.

(Arlene)That's wonderful, and thank you for sharing your personal story and such valuable information that will save lives at the end of the day.

(Alan) Thank you.

(Arlene) Absolutely.

Thank you Alan.