There is Hope for our Children
By Marie Blood | 1st January 2008
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24 in the state of Illinois, according to Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of Illinois Valley, Katie Jones.
Nationally, it is the third leading cause of death in that age group.
“Suicide prevention among our young people is not a topic most people want to address,” said Jones in a recent telephone interview. She is the first one to admit that it is a complicated issue and not one easily dealt with; however, she and her staff of six covering a six-county wide area are dedicated to long-term solutions involving and serving the whole community.
Jones says it is an accurate estimate that only 20 per cent of children and adolescents with a mental illness are identified, leaving the other 80 per cent unidentified and thus leading to possible suicides and other lesser mental health problems.
One of those “identification solutions” being implemented for the first time in Illinois is a program started by Jones in 2004 at Brimfield High School called Teen Screen.
“Teen Screen is the nation’s model program for early identification of mental health problems and it includes linkage to services,” explains Jones. “It is not enough to just define the problem but you need to connect the people who need the help to solutions. Out of all we do, it is probably the most effective program for actually securing services for the people who need support.”
According to Jones, Teen Screen was created, developed and researched by Columbia University and implemented in New York City before it was expanded nationally. It currently is in 400 sites in fifty states.
Jones adds there are no adverse effects from the Teen Screen Program: It has been well researched.
“First, we make sure we do no harm,” cautions Jones. “So, we go in with identification skills training programs like QPR and Yellow Ribbon (those are the two we utilize right now) and then we provide Teen Screen and have done this at Brimfield and at Princeville in Stark County.”
The QPR stands for Question, Persuade and Refer which is provided to schools’ staff prior to Jones’ programs: “This is like emergency psychological first aid for helping somebody that is in a suicidal crisis.” says Jones, who adds that her staff has provided this training to several primary and secondary schools in the area. Specifically, they trained the District 150 social workers and special education providers in 2005.
“We have been working with District 150 schools with this program and they have been very receptive, plus the City of Peoria Police Department and the juvenile Detention facility,” she adds. She feels they also need to talk to doctors and nurses and the court system about this program.
The second program with which they train educators, social workers and administrators is called Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program that Jones claims has helped over 40,000 individuals internationally. It is a simple early identification program which arms kids with a very easy way to ask for help.
So, Jones sees her total program of Children’s Mental Health Matter as an umbrella organization that implements the two screening processes of QPR and Yellow Ribbon which then segues into Teen Screen for help.
Jones sees this multidisciplinary approach where you educate the adults, the youth and then screen the young people and connect them to clinical services is a necessary ecological approach to mental health problems.
“We have taken an ecological approach. We are all part of the same environment. How do we work together to support kids in crisis who have thoughts of suicide because largely mental health problems like depression have gone untreated?” Jones explains. “People are afraid to get help or they don’t know where to get help.”
Jones believes Americans need to realize that mental health is an important as taking care of themselves physically. She and her “stretched to the limit staff:” which covers Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Stark, Marshall and Fulton counties, are especially concerned about the underserved rural populations who are more unlikely to search for help with mental health problems.
“Rural teens are at a greater risk than urban teens,” she states. “There is a much higher rate of suicide in rural areas,” she adds.
She believes that a greater access to firearms in rural communities can be a contributor. Jones feels another contributing factor is: “Asking for help from outsiders, particularly ‘fuzzy-headed’ liberals who live in town with strange values are not to be trusted,” she surmises. “There is wisdom behind that idea, but unfortunately, there is also isolation that results from that.”
Another outreach in place in Central Illinois for teens is the “Teens Need Teens” hotline which can be reached at 1-800-273-TALK. This hotline allows tri-county teens to confidentially talk about their problems with people their own age. This is connected to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.org on the internet.
“If you call from Peoria, you will get someone in Peoria, if they are busy, the technology will bounce your call to the next closet hotline in our state.
“Everyone answering these calls is accredited through American Association of Suicidology (AAS) or another accrediting body,” she states. Locally, they currently have 30 volunteers and six staff manning phones 24 hours a day.
“As we see the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline get co-marketed with websites and TV commercials, we see the rate of calls increase, so that is a good thing,” says Jones.
She states men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, so they have developed a campaign called “Real Men, Real Depression.”
“We are ‘first thing’ locally in stigma reduction in the vein of focusing on men because they are top priority in terms of their highest risk through promoting a speakers bureau call ‘Stories of Recovery,’” says Jones. “This bureau provides speakers young and old from all different walks of life that speak in churches, schools, local businesses and police departments that say, ‘Hey, I suffered from mental illness and I am in recovery.’Jones realizes with her limited staff, she can’t be everything to everyone.
“We have to target the most at-risk populations with the most science-based effective approaches and then expand from there,” she says.