Messages of Hope: AK Suicide Prevention Conference
May 17-18, 2023
Welcome to the Alaska Division of Behavioral Health’s Suicide Prevention Team’s and the Statewide Suicide Prevention Council’s joint suicide prevention conference, ‘Messages of Hope.’ This conference will be an opportunity to engage with suicide prevention research, data, innovation, and community level action to help shape your work to address suicide within Alaska. This conference will also highlight the five-year State Suicide Prevention Plan, the power of youth voices, and Alaskan-centered knowledge. We look forward to your participation at this two-day event to help build and enhance the connections and foundation we all need to collaboratively strive towards a robust system of suicide prevention within Alaska.
AGENDA
8:00 am – 8:30 am
Registration & Breakfast
Welcome & Housekeeping
Keynote
Christina Love
BREAK
Concurrent sessions
Domestic Violence & Suicide in Alaska; Root Causes and Multi-Level Healing-Centered Practices
Speakers:
Ray Romberg, Christina Love
Description:
This Campfire side chat on Domestic Violence and Suicide will explore the root causes of these issues in Alaska and offer multi-level healing-centered practices for individuals, organizations, and communities. Participants will learn how to shift from a trauma-informed approach to a healing-centered one, examining the role of language, ideology, and narrative in creating lasting change. The training will highlight the interconnectedness of domestic violence and suicide, moving beyond silos to consider the ways in which these issues exist together. Participants will learn about intervention and prevention strategies, including somatic practices that can support healing, resistance, and resilience. Through this Campfire Chat and other interactive activities, participants will engage in storytelling, dialogue, and conversation to build understanding and create community. Ultimately, this training aims to provide participants with tools and practices to address these complex issues, creating lasting change that is grounded in healing and connection.
Why We Hurt and Community Engagement
Speakers:
Tiffany Webb, Amber Webb
Description:
Our understanding of trauma, racism, lateral oppression, historic and intergenerational trauma and the intersection with substance use combined with strength in our identity and ways of knowing as native people can improve health outcomes. We will share how we have been putting this knowledge into action and engaging community members in Bristol Bay as part of prevention work.
What I Would Have Missed: Our Collective Journey of Hope, Healing, and Happiness
Speaker:
Julie Rocco
Description:
Showcasing how we may use our lived experiences and the power of self-reflection, art, and connectedness to create a collective journey of hope, healing, and happiness in an effort to prevent suicide and promote mental wellness.
BREAK
Concurrent sessions
ANTHC Blanket Exercise
Amber Frasure, Panikaa Teeple, Jonathan Guerrero, Amber Schmidt
Description:
The Alaska Blanket Exercise (ABE) program and evaluators will discuss the current evidence for the ABE including the voices of attendees and a PhotoVoice project. Then we will discuss the future of the ABE including future development and continued efforts of program evaluation.
Providing Safe and Affirming Environments for LGBTQ Youth
Keygan Miller
Description:
This session will focus on the findings of The Trevor Projects 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, putting the results into context with current events, and focusing on the implications of providing LGBTQ youth with an affirming environment that supports their mental health and wellbeing.
Healthy Native Youth
Hannah Warren
Description:
Culture is ingrained in everything that we do. As caring adults, Relatives and allies, we can share with each other how we can utilize culture as prevention in order to engage, energize and best serve our Native youth. Together, we will be exploring local and national resources available that integrate Native culture into prevention services for holistic health and wellbeing – from mental and emotional health to sexual health and HIV/STI prevention services – to help raise Healthy Native Youth.
LUNCH
Concurrent sessions
Indigenizing Suicide Prevention Content
Tina DeAsis Samaniego, Aaron Surma
Description:
This presentation will examine Juneau Suicide Prevention Coalition’s process of indigenizing their programs and presentations over the past three years using concepts of civic intelligence and social innovation, and equitable practices. During this presentation, JSPC staff will share their process for:
– growing organizational and personal equity practices
– examining our array of programs to determine if they match our organization values of reaching ALL members in our communities.
– strategic partnerships to modify programs to better reach intended audiences.
We hope program attendees will develop a framework of thinking that allows them to modify existing programs, assess the needs of their audiences, and strengthen their equity mindset.
Crisis Panel
Speakers:
James Savage, Leah Van Kirk, Eric Boyer, Samantha Gunes
Description:
A panel presentation on the expansion and current state of behavioral health and suicide crisis services in Alaska.
Wounding the Healer: Suicide's Quest for Voice
Daniel Ballin
Description:
This presentation, entitled “Wounding the Healer: Suicide’s Quest for Voice,” explores the experience of the clinician suicide loss survivor. Based on his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Daniel Ballin reviews Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes and describes the origins of “The Wounded Healer.” Dr. Ballin presents his research findings on clinician suicide loss survivors, the impact of their wounding experiences, and their healing journeys. The archetype of the Wounded Healer provides a context and lens from which human service providers can better understand and grow from their experience with suicide loss. Dr. Ballin presents a brief digital story to illustrate the emotional and soulful aspects of the suicide loss experience.
BREAK
Suicide and Mental Health Amongst Alaska’s Youth: A Panel Presentation
View Description
Speakers:
Steven Riley Fitting, Becky Bitzer, Carmen Wenger, Charity Lee, Andrea Fenaughty
Description:
Panel presentation on adolescent suicide and mental health in Alaska.
Closing remarks
Registration & Breakfast
8:30 am – 9:00 am
Welcome & Housekeeping
Keynote
Moving the Needle; Perspectives learned from Leading National Program
View Description
Speaker:
Dr. Keita Franklin
Description:
This presentation will focus implementing a broad scale public health program for preventing suicide. Areas of presentation include: Data and surveillance, policy, peer support, coalition development, innovation, leadership support, mental health therapy and training.
BREAK
Concurrent sessions
Community-Led, Research-Informed: Promoting Community Conversations About Research to End Suicide (PC CARES)
Lisa Wexler
Description:
This workshop will introduce attendees to PC CARES, a model designed to share information about best practices for suicide prevention with a variety of community members to encourage them to take action to reduce suicide risk and promote wellness in ways that make sense for them. The workshop will describe the ways PC CARES balances community, cultural and scientific knowledges to spark and support community-led suicide prevention. The short presentation at the beginning will also talk about the basic elements of PC CARES, the user-friendly design, and the promising evaluation results from studies done in remote and rural Alaska. The bulk of the workshop time will be spent in a learning circle in which facilitators share insights from research (‘What does the research show?’). Participants, then, spend time discussing how this information applies to their experiences and knowledge (‘What do we think?’), and could be put into action in their lives (‘What do we want to do?’). The information in this learning circle will be tailored to the people who sign up for the workshop (i.e. youth workers, behavioral health aids, community leaders, etc), and the interactive session will encourage participants to leave with ‘actionable ideas for reducing suicide risk and promoting wellness.
Military Culture and Suicide
Speakers:
Monique Andrews, Gwendolyn Anderson
Description:
Suicide rates amongst members of the military continue to rise despite continued prevention efforts. Military personnel and veterans experience unique challenges which could possibly be contributing factors in increasing rates of deaths by suicide. Deployments, separation from family, financial difficulties, traumatic brain injury, mental illness, transition, and injury are some of the additional stressors military members may face during their time in service. Military culture and values contribute to the success of our force but may also contribute to individuals finding it difficult to seek help. Individuals experiencing distress may exhibit symptoms atypical than those identified in the DSM-5-TR under depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, and Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders.
This presentation is aimed at broadening the scope of prevention efforts to include understanding and recognizing atypical symptoms of distress, assessing for risk of suicide to include atypical symptoms of distress, assessing for lethal means, and stigma associated with suicide in the military.
Alaska Maternal and Child Death Review (MCDR): Systems Overview and Suicide-Related Data
Speakers:
Anna Frick, Melissa Bradley
Description:
We will have several data managers in this session talking about what data on suicidality are available and how to access it. Anna will talk about syndromic surveillance data, including explaining what syndromic data is, how we get it, and how to request it. We will also talk about interpretation and analysis of this somewhat difficult data source.
BREAK
Concurrent sessions
Community-Led, Research-Informed: Promoting Community Conversations About Research to End Suicide (PC CARES) continued
Lisa Wexler
Description:
This workshop will introduce attendees to PC CARES, a model designed to share information about best practices for suicide prevention with a variety of community members to encourage them to take action to reduce suicide risk and promote wellness in ways that make sense for them. The workshop will describe the ways PC CARES balances community, cultural and scientific knowledges to spark and support community-led suicide prevention. The short presentation at the beginning will also talk about the basic elements of PC CARES, the user-friendly design, and the promising evaluation results from studies done in remote and rural Alaska. The bulk of the workshop time will be spent in a learning circle in which facilitators share insights from research (‘What does the research show?’). Participants, then, spend time discussing how this information applies to their experiences and knowledge (‘What do we think?’), and could be put into action in their lives (‘What do we want to do?’). The information in this learning circle will be tailored to the people who sign up for the workshop (i.e. youth workers, behavioral health aids, community leaders, etc), and the interactive session will encourage participants to leave with ‘actionable ideas for reducing suicide risk and promoting wellness.
Creativity in Crisis: 3 Strategies to Strengthen Collaborative Problem-Solving
Addison Helsper
Description:
When supporting those in need, friends, family and professionals aim to provide the least invasive short-term intervention needed for safety, often employing the use of collaborative problem-solving approaches. However, prior studies suggest frequent issues (e.g., exploring alternatives; brainstorming) in its implementation even for professional crisis workers. Despite prior successful implementation of creative problem solving approaches in counseling and social services—there is no current structured guidance provided for crisis and suicide prevention work to improve collaborative problem-solving while under the modality, resource, and time constraints imposed. This presentation intends to provide a framework and three concrete and implementable strategies to enhance the implementation of collaborative problem-solving approaches in the context of crisis and suicide prevention. Integrating existing support structures from creative problem-solving techniques such as the Design Thinking Model (DTM) aims to provide a uniform approach, boost counselor self-efficacy, foster innovative strategies, and create a foundation for the development of further strategies.
Reporting on Suicide
Eric Morrison, Dustin Morris
Description:
This presentation will focus on how to safely talk about suicide and suicide prevention and ensuring safe
messaging when talking about the topic to individuals, groups, the media, and the public. Safe messaging is a key component when discussing suicide to avoid potentially harmful messaging content. Harmful messaging has the potential of increasing the likelihood that at-risk individuals may consider or attempt suicide themselves and can increase the risk of contagion.
LUNCH
Suicide Prevention Plan Review / Ice Cream Social
Eric Morrison
BREAK
Suicide Risk Screening and Intervention with the Columbia Protocol and the Stanley-Brown Safety Plan
View Description
Speaker:
Adam Lesser
Description:
The Columbia Protocol (C-SSRS) (www.cssrs.columbia.edu) is now widely recognized as a gold-standard, innovative suicide risk screening tool. It has been implemented in many systems across the US and abroad with tremendous benefit– identification of people who would have otherwise been missed while redirecting scarce resources. Evaluation in hospital-based psychiatric emergency departments when it is not necessary is costly, sometimes traumatic, and may be less effective in routing people into ongoing care. This workshop will review the development of the C-SSRS and its administration, covering its items predictive of increased risk. Participants will learn about how to administer the full and screening versions of the tool, how to use the checklist of risk and protective factors, how to customize the tool and how to interpret results. Training will also include information on the Stanley Brown Safety Plan
Closing remarks
SPEAKERS
Dr. Keita Franklin
Columbia Lighthouse Project
Adam Lesser
Deputy Director
Columbia Lighthouse Project
REGISTRATION
