Mental Health Partners hosts discussion on adolescent suicide, prevention
Daily CameraMay 13, 2022
May 13βThe Boulder County community has suffered through a lot in recent history.
Mental health remains as important as ever while the population slowly emerges from pandemic-induced social isolation, recovers from the deadly mass shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers, and rebuilds after the devastating
As the community inches towards healing,
On Wednesday morning, the nonprofit hosted its annual community breakfast to discuss ways to address and prevent youth suicide in the region.
According to the
About 200 people attended the breakfastat the
Mueller, who is an associate professor of sociology at
"Suicide is such a complex phenomenon, it is an intermingling of biological, social, environmental and psychological risk factors.
"Suicide is most likely to occur when three factors co-occur in a person's life. When they feel like they are a burden to others, when they feel like they don't belong, and when they have some capacity to end their life," Mueller said.
Mueller said that the experience of not feeling like you belong is heightened when you are in your early adolescence, when self-awareness is at an all-time high.
"Youth have some unique developmental processes going on. It's a very unique developmental stage where kids are actually more tuned into their social contexts than earlier in childhood or later in adulthood," Mueller said.
Overall, adolescents are more generally vulnerable. Mueller said that in order to address suicide prevention we need to develop stronger and more accessible safety nets.
One way that members of the community can help is to learn how to become a safety net themselves.
A list of the courses can be found at the
Mueller said she encourages school principals, law enforcement officials and families to get the training.
"There's no reason that any of you can't decide, 'I'm going to carry that knowledge for my family.' The hard thing is that you have to do it ahead of time because you never know when a crisis will happen," Mueller said.
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