Some survivors of suicide victims fighting the silence
Recognize, Connect! Frameworks Suicide Prevention Project
Chris Dorin - Golden Dome News
November 8, 2007 - The Laconia Daily Sun
CONCORD — Lawmakers and leaders in the nonprofit sector are gearing up for a statewide policy attack on suicide. Thanks to a $400,000 federal grant and some private foundation aid, the state chapter of the National Association for Mental Illness is running pilot programs in Moultonborough, Berlin and elsewhere to train hundreds of kids and adults to save lives. It’s a matter of asking the tough questions at the right time. It’s also being there for a suicide survivor. That phrase is not a contradiction in terms. Those who grieve need help to get past the sudden tragedy. Senator Kathy Sgambati, D-Tilton, has filed a bill on behalf of the association to coordinate a wide range of prevention efforts and support groups under a statutory task force. It will have the expertise, clout and staying power to carry out a state plan posted on the web site of the Department of Health and Human Services. “We need to learn from these first, small-scale projects,” Sgambati said. “We all know somebody in our neighborhood who needs a hand. I can’t imagine what the parents of a suicide have to go through. It must be an incredible journey.”
Most suicides have a mental illness, experts say, often undiagnosed. Some simple training can help colleagues and bowling league teammates to ask how you and I are doing, and to be ready for the answer. Most people who try to kill themselves hint about it first. They give away keepsakes or come home with nose rings. Some even spell it out. If the worst comes anyway, the survivors of a son’s or a coach’s suicide face a wall of once-unimaginable questions. It makes all things possible. Coos County, with its shrinking paper and logging industries, has the highest suicide rate in the state.
New Hampshire had 215 suicides by people age 24 and younger between 1997 and 2006, according to the annual report of the State Youth Suicide Prevention Assembly issued a month ago. Only 37 were by girls. Girls actually harm themselves badly enough to need medical care about twice as often, but boys use means that work. Diane Bunnell of Berlin lost her son Ian to suicide in 2000 at age 18. He had just dyed his hair black, which she misread that change as normal teen rebellion. This March she started a support group that meets the second Thursday of the month at the Family Resource Center in Gorham. She gave permission to publish her phone number, 752-5984. “In hindsight you can see there were a lot of hints, but I never connected the dots,” Bunnell said. “We help people connect them. You never get the answers, but it helps you get to another place of feeling.” The Association for the Mentally Ill has trained numerous adults in Berlin to spot potential suicides and teach others to do the same. The whole high school student council has learned to be peer trainers too, and half the student body has signed up for a
related seminar this month at the local community college. Gorham is gearing up for a similar effort in both the town and schools. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among New Hampshire teens, behind car wrecks. Berlin High School principal Gary Bisson is unaware of any suicides among his students in the five years he’s been in charge. “The staff has done a marvelous job identifying kids at risk,” he said. Moultonborough has held several forums, including one Oct. 16, to answer a spate of suicides that rocked the community last year. Local social worker Todd Ringelstein said the chance for public grieving was cathartic. He and school psychologist Peter Whelley, Police Chief Scott Kinmond and others pushed for a $5,000 petition article to take steps
to stop future tragedies. The item passed at March town meeting by unanimous voice vote. Whelley said the school district screens 8th and 10th graders in the health course for symptoms that might put them at risk of self-injury. They fill out a questionnaire at the computer and then meet with a clinician. “The suicides last year touched everyone in town,” Whelley said. “It has helped people to talk about their feelings in a community setting. That’s when the healing happens.” Ringelstein said the prevention group is a good cross section, from loggers to nurses. “We’re getting suicide out of the closet,” he said. Kinmond investigated several of the suicides. He said some of the $5,000 will help pay for a mental health clinician to see patients at an office in town one afternoon a week. The nearest mental health care, in Wolfeboro and Laconia, has been too far away for any Moultonborough residents. “The responding officers and EMTs were deeply affected by what happened last year,” Kinmond said. “People you think you know put on this stoic image that everything is fi ne. When you can see they are depressed, you have to pull out all the stops to get them help.” The Reverend Anne Roser of Nativity Lutheran Church in North Conway lost her brother to suicide at age 21 in 1986. She has run a support group in the past like Bunnell’s, and she served on a school trauma response team in Pennsylvania. “People don’t know what to say to you. You learn to take baby steps in recovery,” Roser explained. “I was a minister at the time. I had the same questions as others, but I’m still a minister. I had to find the answers to move on.”
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