News Article

Share:

Global Content Zone 1

Mental Health Partners hosts discussion on adolescent suicide, prevention

Daily Camera
May 13, 2022

May 13β€”The 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 Marshall Fire.

As the community inches towards healing, Mental Health Partners wants to make sure that the conversation continues β€” especially when it comes to the mental health of adolescents.

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 National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the second-leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults between the ages of 10-24, second to unintentional injury. A study published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2020 showed suicide rates increased 51.3% in Colorado between 2007 and 2018 for persons between the ages of 10-24.

About 200 people attended the breakfastat the Lionsgate Event Center in Lafayette. Guest speaker Anna S. Mueller, Ph.D., shared her research on the social factors that play into adolescent suicide.

Mueller, who is an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, spoke about the complicated nature of suicide, and how understanding the social contexts of suicide are essential in its prevention.

"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.

Mental Health Partners offers a number of courses on suicide prevention in order to teach members of the community how to recognize the warning signs of a mental health crisis, how to mitigate the situation and refer the individual to help.

A list of the courses can be found at the Mental Health Partners website β€” mhpcolorado.org β€” under the training tab.

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.

___

(c)2022 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.)

Visit the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) at www.dailycamera.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Global Content Zone 2