“Now everyone is talking about it. It’s not a dirty word anymore.”—Heather Pelser, Pueblo County Suicide Prevention
Building a New Model for Suicide Prevention
Pueblo, Colorado, has tackled the problem of suicide with an old approach - more heads are better than one - and come up with an innovative solution. They decided to talk about it and work together to address the elephant on the table.
Gathering a group of stakeholders together, representatives from Pueblo County joined the Colorado National Collaborative (CNC). The hope is that if the CNC achieves even part of its goal, it may just change the way the nation addresses suicide.
“This model would be replicable across the country, and that might change the trajectory of suicide in the U.S.”— Jerry Reed, national expert on suicide prevention.
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Culture of Caring: A Suicide Prevention Guide for Schools (K-12) was
created as a resource for educators who want to know how to get started and
what steps to take to create a suicide prevention plan that will work for their
schools and districts. It is written from my perspective as a school principal
and survivor of suicide loss, not an expert in psychology or counseling. I hope
that any teacher, school counselor, psychologist, principal, or district
administrator can pick up this book, flip to a chapter, and easily find helpful
answers to the questions they are likely to have about what schools can do to
prevent suicide.
