State Funding Update:
The Legislature reconvenes in mid-January and will be adopting a supplemental budget to address the $2.9 Billion dollar deficit. Governor Gregoire submitted her budget in December that included good news and bad news for YSPP. The good news is that there were no proposed reductions in funding from the Department of Health; the bad news is that the OSPI money to support our two school curricula – H.E.L.P. (Helping Every Living Person) and LOOK LISTEN LINK – was proposed for elimination. The House and Senate will each develop their own budgets and then a final budget will emerge after much discussion and even more compromise. It is never too late to communicate with your senator and representatives. Tell them that funding that saves lives and prevents tragedy should not be jeopardized.
If you don’t know who your legislators are or how to reach them, go to www.leg.wa.gov.
Come Bowl with Us:
YSPP has organized three bowling events in the first three months of the year that will be FUN and raise money for YSPP programs. If you are serious about bowling and own a bag and a ball, please come AND if you are less serious and find that you can’t hit enough pins to break 50, we want you as well. Sometimes the mission of YSPP feels overwhelmingly big and sad and hard to talk about, but these events will be full of laughter and focus on PREVENTION and LIFE.
Graduate Students’ Projects:
Last summer, Angela Tang – a master’s student in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington – did a project for YSPP on firearm related suicides among 10-24 year-olds in Washington State between the years 1999 and 2007. During that nine year period 501 Washington State youth died by suicide with a firearm. Firearms accounted for 53% of all youth suicides – more than all other methods combined. Firearm suicide rates were highest among males, 20-24 year-olds and American Indian/Alaska Native youth. Angela’s work, including recommendations for prevention, can be reviewed by clicking on the image to the left.
In January two graduate-level nursing students from the University of Washington will be working with YSPP on a project that will focus on prescription pain killer (opiates) abuse and its connection with suicide attempt and death. They will be working on developing and disseminating a public education campaign that will target parents as well as prescribing physicians.
YSPP Youth Council:
It’s about time we seriously listened to the wisdom of youth! In November we organized a youth advisory council that now has representatives from area high schools who meet and discuss ways to better “market” the message of suicide prevention and the resources of YSPP. They created a Facebook page and are busy trying to recruit more members for the council. Some of them are involved in suicide prevention efforts in their own schools and some of them have a personal interest in the issue of depression and suicide. To find out more and to access their Facebook page, click here.
Crescent Students on TVW:
The students at Crescent Jr-Sr High School in Joyce, Washington have been actively working to prevent suicide after one of their peers killed himself six years ago. Under the leadership of the school counselor, Sherri Jones, the students have organized suicide prevention campaigns each year and have actually taken their message to other schools in the county. They have twice been the recipient of the Trevor R. Simpson Award for exemplary suicide prevention efforts; this award is given by YSPP in memory of a young man who died by suicide in 1992. This year the Crescent students got their efforts recognized on TVW (Washington State Public Affairs TV Network) — click here to learn more and watch the episode that aired on December 21st.
Congratulations to Crescent’s SOS (Students Offering Support) team!!!
Health Curricula for Middle & High School Students:
Since September we have sold multiple copies of H.E.L.P. (Helping Every Living Person) and LOOK LISTEN LINK to schools inside and outside of Washington State. Inquiries have come from Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Idaho and Illinois as a result of our national recognition on the best practice registry. Because of our success with the middle and high school curricula, we are also working with the elementary counselors in the Snoqualmie Valley School District to develop a 5th grade curriculum.
As a part of the development process we conducted two focus groups – one with twelve 6th graders and another with 6 mothers of sixth graders. We wanted to learn from the young people what they identify as some of the hard parts of the transition from elementary to middle school and what specific things they had wished they had learned in elementary to better prepare them for 6th grade. We asked the parents similar questions about the transition to middle school and what they have done to help their children with the stress.
One of the 6th graders recognized that his parents were “loosening the leash” but wasn’t certain he necessarily liked that. We are building content that will help with identifying emotions and managing the difficult ones. We are considering the idea of having students develop individual mantras that they can say to themselves when things go wrong, like “this too shall pass” or “there is always tomorrow” or “nothing very good or very bad lasts very long”. If you have a calming mantra that works for you and that you wish to share, send it along.
Annual Campaign Results:
Thanks to the generosity of staff and board friends/family, along with community advocates and suicide survivors, we received 100 gifts and a total of $11,765 in our annual campaign. These funds will support professional training activities and implementation of our school-based health curricula. The postman wasn’t quite sure about us because we would break into big smiles and start doing the “happy dance” when he delivered the mail in December.
Click here for a list of individual, business, and foundation contributors.
Volunteers Making a Difference:
Are you looking for a place to make a difference? If so, we can use you!
Here are just a few examples of the important work our generous volunteers are doing to help YSPP work toward its mission:
- Sarah and Sammie come in once a week and help with data entry, filing, mailings and general office support.
- Others, like Dana and Amy attend health fairs, chatting about suicide prevention and distributing brochures that YSPP offers.
- Nitsa became intrigued by the death data related to young men, ages 18-24, and wondered how we might reach out to this age cohort. She looked closely at death certificates and discovered that many of the young men who had died by suicide had not graduated from high school and were working in menial jobs prior to their deaths.
- Nitsa’s research is being turned into a grant proposal that she is helping to write.
- Becky has talent as a graphic designer and between submitting applications to graduate school, she has re-designed one of our informational brochures.
- John is a CPA and serves on the board of directors, chairing the finance committee.
- And sometimes staff even rope their parents into assembling curriculum
- binders! (see photo above with Lisa Watson working in the office with her folks)
Kelly Chatwood is our coordinator of volunteer activities; please consider joining the cause! You can reach her at kelly@yspp.org or go to our volunteer application.
Survey Results from Firearm Advisory Group:
YSPP and Washington Cease Fire have been working collaboratively - with several mothers whose sons died by suicide - on a project to determine the feasibility of a public awareness campaign that reduces youth suicide by firearms.
We conducted an online survey that collected responses from 287 participants. 85% answered correctly that boys and young men are more likely to die by suicide than girls and young women. But only 54% of the respondents knew that firearms was the most common way that young people kill themselves; 30% thought that overdose with pills was the correct answer. The majority of the survey participants (200) did not have a gun in their home, while 65 indicated that they owned more than one. In response to a question about the effectiveness of a campaign directed towards keeping firearms out of the hands of youth at-risk of suicide, 61.5% responded that it would be “somewhat effective”.
The advisory group will reconvene in late January and digest the results of the survey and develop a plan of action. If you would be interested in working on this project, please get in touch with Sue Eastgard at (206) 297-5922 ext. 1.
Reel Grrls Help Produce DVD:
YSPP recently partnered with Reel Grrls – www.reelgrrls.org - to produce an eight minute DVD that will accompany our youth facilitated curriculum on GLBTQ-specific suicide risk. Jaden Euster, Red Monroe and Kaitlin Krhanek worked diligently with our OUTLoud Coordinator, Heather Carter, to develop the script. Then Reel Grrls stepped in with professional equipment and expertise to film the action. The final version should be ready in early to mid February and we are eager to share it with you.
We are indebted to the Community Organizing Program of King County’s Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division for the stipends they provided for the participating youth. If you work at a school that has a Gay-Straight Alliance, we would love to conduct a suicide prevention presentation for your group.