During National Suicide Prevention we, our #SPSM community participated in a host of social media campaigns! Sunday 9/14/14, 9pm CST, we’ll chat with Raquel Goodrich, the woman behind #TextTalkAct.

The Tweets for this chat will be archived on Storify.

Over the past year, Raquel has led the Communications effort for Creating Community Solutions, part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health. Creating Community Solutions (CCS) was created in response to the Obama administration’s call to action after the Newtown tragedy. Members of the CreatingCommunity Solutions Coalition have since been working to help communities organize dialogues and take action.

The result is communities across the country taking the lead in practicing our best democratic traditions of active, respectful citizen engagement. They are bringing people together to engage in a dialogue about mental health, to eliminate the misconceptions behind the disease and to identify priorities for action. To date, over 170 community conversations on mental health have been held as a result of thiseffort.

Raquel has also helped lead the efforts behind Text, Talk, Act, an innovative texting platform that combines text messaging, social media and face to face dialogue to get young people talking about mental health and taking action to help their friends. To date, the initiative has engaged thousands ofmillennials in a conversation to help end the silence on mental health. The familiar technology makes young people feel more comfortable, coupled with the small group dialogue that lets them engage in dialogue with their peers. Use of social media helps them see how they are part of a larger national effort. The results have been extraordinary.

Raquel Goodrich is the Director of Digital Communications and Social Media Strategy for the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Raquel manages the Institute’s websites and social media programs, and assists with the overall communications strategy. She came from the Udall Foundation’s U.S. Institute or Environmental Conflict Resolution, where she worked to integrate collaborative technologies into conflict resolution processes and provided training to conflict resolution practitioners on the use of collaborative technology. She is experienced in meeting facilitation and conflict resolution processes andholds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Maine and a Bachelor of Social Sciencesfrom Unity College.

Raquel came to the Institute to help provide online platforms where Americans can engage in civil discourse around the issues that are most important to them. Recognizing a lack of safe spaces in the online environment, she utilizes collaborative technology and best practices to encourage people to take responsibility of their democracy.