Patrick Warren, Sr., Shot to Death by Officer During Mental Health Welfare Check — Patrick Warren, Sr., a pastor in Killeen, TX, was killed by officer Reynaldo Contreras during a welfare check on Sunday. When Warren showed signs of emotional distress, his family called 911 for assistance. Killeen is located in Bell County, which employs Mental Health Deputies—officers trained in crisis intervention whose goal…

Suicide Rates May Be Lowest During the Holidays, but You Should Still Check on Your People — One of the biggest myths about suicide is that people end their lives in larger numbers during the holidays. This is not true. I used to make sure to discuss this myth every year on my social channels because it’s inaccurate, and I got tired of seeing media pushes and…

(This post was originally published on the Live Through This blog on September 5, 2020.) So, let’s talk about this weird hierarchy around “serious” or “medically serious” suicide attempts versus “non-serious” ones. In short, it’s harmful to all of us with lived experience of suicidal intensity of any kind. Based…

The suicide rates keep rising, so why do we keep doing the same things over and over? — (This post was originally published on the Live Through This blog on September 1, 2020.) I always feel so pressured to participate in Suicide Prevention Month when I don’t particularly want to and don’t, at this point, see much value in it. The reality is that all the same messaging…

Suicide is all over the news this week. It’s hard to avoid right now. It’s a difficult topic to think and talk about on the best of days, let alone when you’re being bombarded left and right by news reports and social media posts. As with Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain’s…

You’ve probably heard by now that Kate Spade died from suicide. Please be informed regarding how to share this news with your networks. So many of the media articles coming out are filled with sensationalistic garbage that misses the point, which is that she was in deep despair and, for…

I learned last night that Amy Bleuel, founder of Project Semicolon, died by suicide last week. In sitting with the news and trying to find clarity, I keep thinking of my colleagues. Suicide prevention work is done almost exclusively by people who have lost someone to suicide or who have…

It’s been two years since Robin Williams died, and I still can’t watch anything he’s been in without feeling a deep pang of sadness. For decades, we watched him play characters that touched different parts of us. The range of emotion he masterfully portrayed over the years — and in…

I’ve been watching the headlines, the hashtags trending on Twitter, the growing list of names of black people whose lives were taken by law enforcement officials (Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Melissa Ventura—all in one week) out of fear, lack of training, institutionalized racism. I’m a white woman. I will never…