How You are Helping to Prevent Suicide

This will be our sixth year participating as Team Emma in the Out of the Darkness Walk benefiting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Team Emma was founded just a couple of months after Emma died by Jessica Ricchetti, one of Emma's very wise friends. In the wake of Emma's death,  Jessica wanted to try to understand Emma's death and help to prevent other suicide deaths in the future. AFSP was her answer, and we followed her lead.

Many of you followed our lead. Without knowing much about suicide prevention or AFSP, you generously and faithfully donated to Team Emma each year and helped us raise many thousands of dollars for the cause. We know that you did that without questioning where your money was going. You did it to support us. We are so grateful for that expression of unconditional love.

But we think you deserve to know not just where your money is going, but what your money is doing, because you are making some really great things happen!

Keeping it Local
Many of you may not realize that half of your money stays right here in Connecticut to support all kinds of programs:

• Chapter volunteers run a monthly support group for survivors, which can be a real lifeline for people who have lost a loved one to suicide. 
• Every year the local chapter of AFSP hosts a survivor conference to offer support and education for people who have lost loved ones to suicide. 
• Our chapter has paid to train volunteers in a number of different suicide prevention protocols and educational curricula. These volunteers are available to provide education and/or training for your school or group.
• Your support helps us to purchase and produce educational and informational resources that Chapter volunteers distribute at health fairs and resource fairs.
• We sponsored Mental Health First Aid training for youth leaders in Stamford and Norwalk high schools. These youth now know how to recognize signs of depression and mental illness and how to be a resource to their peers. We look forward to sponsoring this training at more schools!
• This fall we are sponsoring a Mental Health First Aid training for first responders, like police, fire, and EMT/ambulance. This training radically improves the response and safety for first responders and also ensures a safe and effective response for the person in crisis. 
• We have partnered with an area movie theater to sponsor PSAs about suicide prevention that will run in September and will reach thousands. 

Advocacy

Every year, AFSP brings more than 200 advocates from all over the country to Washington, D.C. to learn about important advancements and advocate for legislation that can help prevent suicide. Many of you know that I have participated in these advocacy forums for the past two years. It is an amazing event. We descend upon Capitol Hill and together manage to make personal visits to every single congressional and senate office over the course of one day. The visits, the personal stories, and the compelling facts and data we share are making a difference and we have had some notable victories in the last two years:

• Passage of the Excellence in Mental Health Act which represents the greatest federal investment in community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment and helps insure access to quality, effective services for people who did not have access before.
• Passage of the MODDERN Cures Act, which will allow providers to quickly begin using diagnostics that could dramatically improve the safety and effectiveness of prescribing psychiatric medications.
• Increased funding for the National Violent Death Reporting System that will allow this universal reporting system which, until recently, was only being implemented in 18 states, to be implemented in 32 states, including Connecticut. Almost every major cause of death has a system in place for uniformly collecting data about deaths by that illness. That data has been the foundation that has helped inform incredible advancements in cancer treatment, heart disease and other illnesses. The National Violent Death Reporting System will help us to get that data for suicide deaths. 
• Re-authorization of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act which provides funding for much of the community-based and school-based suicide prevention programming in our country.

Research

AFSP is supporting promising research that will lead to advancements in suicide prevention. I encourage you to explore the AFSP website to learn about the studies that AFSP is supporting.

It's time for me to ask for your support of Team Emma once again this year, but I do so knowing that, together, we are truly making a difference. Let's create a world without suicide!

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Mrs. v E goes to Washington

On June 12th I will travel to Washington for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's annual advocacy forum. I have been serving as an AFSP field advocate for about 3 years, but this is my first time participating in the forum. I will be meeting with all of our CT delegation; talking to them about my experience and sharing ideas about what we can do as a nation to prevent suicide and improve mental health.

As part of our forum preparation, AFSP asked us to write up vignettes that could be included in the packets that will be left with legislative staff. Even though much of the content is from stuff I've written before, I thought I would share mine here.

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On June 17, 2009 my precious 17-year-old daughter, Emma Jane, passed away. Emma was beautiful, bright, and articulate, with an effervescent personality. She was a talented musician who shared her musical gifts generously and participated in every musical ensemble she could fit into her schedule. She was a caring daughter, sister, and friend and a bright light in the lives of many, many people.

Emma took her own life.

When Emma killed herself she created a tsunami of destruction that swept up family, friends, teachers, ministers, mentors and neighbors. All of us struggled against the current of guilt, pain, shock and bewilderment. For her immediate family: her father, sister and me, life as we knew it ended.

I’m not sure we will ever fully understand why Emma ended her life; what caused what must have been an incredibly deep sense of despair and hopelessness; or why she couldn’t reach out to us or to the many other caring adults and professionals she had in her life. Nonetheless, in the days, weeks and months after Emma’s death I turned to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) to learn more about suicide and to search for clues that would help explain why my beautiful, bright, talented daughter was gone from our lives.

The facts that I discovered about suicide shocked and alarmed me. Suicide claims close to 39,000 lives in the United States, which is nearly as many as breast cancer and more than twice as many as HIV/AIDS. According to the CDC, suicide was the second leading cause of death for children ages 12-17 in 2010. With statistics like those, how is it that no one; not our schools, not our pediatrician, not even Emma’s therapist of three years, had talked to us about suicide and alerted us to the warning signs? If my husband and I knew the warning signs, would we have been able to get her the right help? My daughter’s pediatrician saw Emma just 3 weeks before her death for a hormonal disorder that can cause depression. Had she understood the risk of suicide in teens like Emma, would she have treated that disorder more aggressively or, perhaps, referred her to a psychiatrist for an assessment? If her therapist, who she saw the night before she ended her life, had had specific training in assessment of suicide risk, would she have picked up a sign that would have allowed us to intervene before it was too late?

I became involved with AFSP as a field advocate because I believe we can do a better job of preventing suicide. We can raise awareness about suicide prevention and mental illness and reduce the stigma that prevents people from seeking help. We can get all the information we already know about suicide prevention into the hands of the people who are best positioned to identify and intervene with those at risk: school personnel, primary care physicians, and behavioral health providers. We can fund research that will unlock remaining mysteries about suicide and mental illnesses and lead to safer and more effective treatments.  If we join together to do these things, I know we can save lives.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Emma and remember the gift that she was in our lives. Working on behalf of AFSP is my way of honoring her and thanking her for the many beautiful memories that I treasure.

Defining Bullying

This seems obvious, but when you're trying to have a conversation about an issue, it's important to be talking about the same thing. As Andrea pointed out in her presentation, there are 46 states with anti-bullying laws on their books and every one of them has a different definition of bullying. Connecticut's anti-bullying law has been amended 6 times in the 10 years it has been on the books, and every time the definition of bullying has been changed.

Connecticut's evolving statutory definition of bullying is still much narrower than the definition most parents and students would use. Since the law carries with it legal requirements for recording, reporting, and responding to incidences of bullying, it is understandable that lawmakers sought to carefully and narrowly define the behaviors that would trigger the required responses. But this has caused some misunderstanding and miscommunication within schools.

I would venture to guess that CT's anti-bullying law struck fear in the hearts of some school administrators when it was first enacted and you can understand their perspective. Kids misbehave. Kids can be mean. What might the state's reporting requirements mean for the reputation of their schools or for individual children? No self-respecting principal wants his/her school to be known for the number of bullying incidents that occurred there;  nor does any child-loving principal or teacher want to put the label of bully on a 8 year-old. In many cases, this fear has led school administrators to narrowly interpret an already narrow definition of bullying. While parents and students may talk about bullying in terms of a wide range of behaviors and incidents that upset and concern them, school administrators are carefully measuring complaints against a statutory yardstick that regulates their response. See where the communication begins to break down?
 
The lack of a common definition of bullying has gotten in the way of fruitful conversation about the social and emotional environments in our schools. If we want to do a better job addressing this issue, we need to first get on the same page. That's part of why you'll see the language shifting from bullying prevention to school climate improvement. Shifting the scope of the conversation to school climate may allow us to settle on a narrow, but common, definition of bullying, while still talking broadly about the behaviors and values that characterize school environments which promote learning, growing, and a feeling of safety and belonging.

Next up...CT's School Climate Improvement Law.

A Voice for Change

I was so pleased to receive this email from my State Representative earlier this week. In her email she takes the time to recognize that May is Mental Health Awareness Month and provides some links to valuable resources for education and support. Even more significantly, she pledges to use some of her political capital to have an impact on suicide prevention and mental health. This is huge. Elected officials naturally gravitate towards issues that people are talking about, and most people would rather not talk about suicide or mental illness. Yet the impact on individuals and families in our state is devastating. We cannot afford to avoid these issues because they make us uncomfortable.

I am greatly comforted to know that someone is stepping up to spark conversation and lead change. It is my most sincere wish that no other family will have to lose a loved one to suicide.

Contact me... Feel free to contact my office with any question, concern or state-related issue where I can help. BY MAIL: State Rep. Brenda Kupchick Room 4200 Legislative Office Building Hartford, CT 06106 BY PHONE OR FAX (800) 842-1423 (Toll Free) (860) 240-8700 (Local) (860) 240-0207 (Fax) Brenda.Kupchick@cga.ct.gov http://www.repkupchick.com HELPFUL STATE WEB SITES General Assembly Consumer Protection Public Utilities Revenue Services Social Services Veterans Affairs Children & Families Public Health Mental Health, Addiction Transportation Motor Vehicles

Friends, May is Mental Health Awareness month, and I wanted to take a few moments to alert to a very serious and growing problem in our communities. This week, NBC featured a blog post quoting our chief medical examiner's office saying the state's suicide rate has climbed to a 20-year high.  While Connecticut’s suicide rate is still low compared to most other states, we now cope with more than one person committing suicide every day.       Officials say the suicide rate has been rising the past five years, and although it is not clear why, officials believe the economic downturn probably has been a factor.       The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says that 9 of every 10 suicides could have been prevented by proper treatment of the mental disorder. If you, or someone you know, is in suicidal crisis or emotional distress please connect to any of these organizations.  They are available around the clock with hotline support and advice on how to assist your friend or family member. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention http://www.afsp.org/ National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255) There is also a new outlet for people who would prefer to communicate via typed words CrisisChat.org I have spent my first term in office working hard to make sure that our students have a safe and comfortable environment to learn in and I have been working with other legislators and families of suicide victims to pursue stronger youth suicide prevention legislation this fall. I promise I will do everything in my power to get this issue highlighted next session if I'm re-elected. Spreading suicide prevention awareness could be the difference between life and death. My heart goes out to all of the families who have had to face this tragedy, and I hope that you pass this email on to your contact lists. Sincerely, Brenda Kupchick State Representative for the 132nd District