Suicide prevention courses grow beyond valley
A suicide prevention effort based in the Flathead Valley is working to reach into new territory in the hope of reducing Montana’s suicide rate, which continues to surpass national levels.
Someone dies by suicide every 12 minutes in the United States, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For more than four decades, the state of Montana has ranked among the highest in the nation for its rate of people who die from intentional self-harm.
From 2011 through 2014, the state hovered between first and second for its high suicide rate. In 2015, Montana ranked third.
“That sounds good, as if there was a drop [in suicides],” said Joan Schmidt, with the Nate Chute Foundation. “But our numbers didn’t go down, what happened was the other states’ numbers went up.”
For roughly 11 years, Schmidt has combined federal grants with health department resources to increase outreach in the Flathead. She offers training on how to identify and respond to mental health disorders.
The free, eight-hour course aims to teach participants how to help someone when they’re trying to manage a disorder as well as how to tap into local resources. Schmidt said the courses have been held in offices for company employees, classrooms for students and teachers or in health department conference rooms for the public.
“We’ve typically worked in the Flathead and Lake counties, but last year our goal was to reach out to our neighbors,” she said.
Through fundraising, the foundation was able to make trips to Eureka, Thompson Falls and Libby in 2016.
In April, the foundation received a grant from the National Council for Behavioral Health to host 10 classes from Polson to St. Ignatius over the next year.
“That’s further than we’ve ever been,” Schmidt said.
MENTAL HEALTH disorders such as depression can be treated. But, Schmidt said, often the people who need help wait until the struggle feels impossible to overcome. She said that’s why it’s important for people to learn how to recognize when someone needs help.
“In these courses, you walk away with intervention tools and learn about what a mental health crisis might look like, what somebody’s struggling with and how to approach them,” she said. “Suicide is preventable.”
Between January 2014 and March 2016, 555 Montanans died by suicide, according to the state’s suicide mortality review team. Of those deaths, investigators identified warning signs leading up to the person’s death in 74 percent of the cases.
Schmidt said she can feel overwhelmed by the fact that the number of self-inflicted deaths in Montana has continued to rise.
In Flathead County in 2015, there were 19 confirmed suicides out of 41 deaths investigated as possible suicides, according to records from the Flathead City County Health Department. Out of the deaths recorded in 2016, Schmidt said so far 23 have been confirmed as suicide.
Schmidt said the increase of suicide prevention training gives her hope that someday, that number will begin to decrease.
A grant from the state health department in 2009 allowed her to take prevention training into Montana schools. She said through those courses, roughly 1,200 students from Flathead and Lake counties combined receive suicide prevention education each year.
“We’ll keep working to grow that, for schools, for businesses, for county workers, anyone who is willing to take the time,” she said. “... If there’s a request for the course from here to St. Ignatius, we’d really like to meet it.”
TWO FREE Mental Health First Aid courses are open to the public this week.
The first course is May 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the second floor conference room in the Flathead City County Health Department. The second course is May 6 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Northwest Montana Educational Co-op.
To register or get more information, contact Joan Schmidt at 406-871-1008.
Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.