@DocForeman @SkyeMarie3918 & @mmbrown14
Chat: Suicide. Grief. PTSD.
A public health approach
A cautionary note: the background links below and the Sunday night chat may be a very difficult conversation for some.
Weaving suicide, grief and PTSD together creates a tapestry of trauma.
In less than two weeks, two survivors of the Parkland shooting and a bereaved father who lost a child in the Sandy Hook shooting died by suicide. In that same time frame, another 1,803 youth, adults and elders also died by suicide, each one a tragedy.
Dr. April Foreman, Skye and Melissa Brown will join the SPSMCHAT 2.0 Reboot via YouTube Live Stream to offer their perspectives to the links between suicide, grief and PTSD as well as existing resources for treatment and advocacy. And this is only the beginning of this conversation.
Please take time to review the links below. They will help inform Sunday night’s Twitter Chat & YouTube live stream.
Background:
What We Get Wrong When We Talk About the Parkland Survivor Deaths : Discussing PTSD is important to survivors — but so is remembering that trauma can be managed, and help can be found
State spent $69M on mental health after Parkland, but didn’t mention PTSD, suicide
Three tragic deaths reverberate across U.S. amid steady rise in suicides
SUICIDE CONTAGION: THE EMOTIONAL DISEASE YOUTH FACE WHILE COPING WITH OUR DEVASTATING CULTURE
Flooding can take toll on mental health
April C. Foreman, Ph.D
April C. Foreman, Ph.D., is a Licensed Psychologist serving Veterans as a Clinical Outreach Specialist in Technology and Innovation for the Veterans Crisis Line. She is an Executive Committee member for the Board of the American Association of Suicidology, and has served VA as the 2017 Acting Director of Technology and Innovation for the Office of Suicide Prevention. She is a member of the team that launched OurDataHelps.org, a recognized innovation in data donation for ground breaking suicide research. She is passionate about helping people with severe (sometimes lethal) emotional pain, and in particular advocates for people with Borderline Personality Disorder, which has one of the highest mortality rates of all mental illnesses. She is known for her work at the intersection of technology, social media, and mental health, with nationally recognized implementations of innovations in the use of technology and mood tracking. She is the 2015 recipient of the Roger J. Tierney Award for her work as a founder and moderator of the first sponsored regular mental health chat on Twitter, the weekly Suicide Prevention Social Media chat (#SPSM, sponsored by the American Association of Suicidology, AAS). Her dream is to use her unique skills and vision to build a mental health system effectively and elegantly designed to serve the people who need it.
Skye
Skye is the Northwest Regional Director for youth gun violence prevention organization March For Our Lives, on the national team for youth climate justice movement This Is Zero Hour and an advocate for refugee and immigration rights. She is 22 years old and currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Studies in California. Although she has been doing advocacy work on the issue of mental health through March For Our Lives California, solutions for preventing suicide contagion came into focus immediately following the suicides in the Parkland and Sandy Hook communities.
Skye is now developing resources in conjunction with the American Association of Suicidology and Brady United for the very specific issues that affect anyone afflicted by gun violence and the intersection of this large community impacted by suicide.
Melissa Brown, DrPH, MPH
Margaret Melissa Brown, DrPH, MPH, is a Behavioral Scientist at the Centers for Disease control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, working in suicide prevention. She is a graduate of the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky (UK). Areas of education concentration include health management and policy, research management, epidemiology, health behavior, individual and family development (family studies), and nursing. Dr. Brown has mentored and collaborated with a diverse group of undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students both within the United States and internationally. Past research has focused on suicide (military, community impact, suicide exposure and bereavement, LGBTQ, prevention and postvention, clergy, posttraumatic growth after suicide), family and community violence, sexual trauma related PTSD, telemedicine, and violence fatality surveillance (NVDRS).
Suicide Prevention Social Media #SPSM 