Raising Awareness
Mental health professionals informed about suicide risksBy KAYLEIGH KARUTIS, The Leader-Herald
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JOHNSTOWN - Schenectady native Tom O'Clair knows all too well the pain families feel when people take their own life.
O'Clair's son Timothy was seven weeks shy of his 13th birthday when he hanged himself in his bedroom closet. Timothy, who had battled mental illness, is the namesake for Timothy's Law, a 2007 measure which requires insurance companies to cover the care needed to treat mental illness.
Mary Jean Coleman and Marianne Reid also know the pain family members feel. Both of them lost their brothers to suicide.
O'Clair, Coleman, Reid and several other people who have been personally affected by suicide told their stories at a suicide awareness and prevention conference sponsored by the Mental Health Association of Fulton and Montgomery Counties on Wednesday at the Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
Mental Heath Association Coordinator of Education Renee Carr said the conference was held to give local mental health professionals more information about suicide, the symptoms leading to it and ways to prevent it.
Reid, an employee of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and formerly a Broadalbin-Perth High School teacher, said her brother, John, killed himself in 2007. She said she joined the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to help prevent any family from going through the pain her family experienced when her brother died.
Coleman, whose brother committed suicide in 1979, Reid and O'Clair all said they want to remove the stigma attached to mental health disorders. It's that stigma that prevents those who are suffering from seeking the help they need, they said.
Carr agreed and said she hoped the conference would give mental health professionals the tools and education they need to recognize the signs of a person considering suicide as well as the confidence to approach that person and ask if they need help. A section of the conference called safeTALK training was designed to help people recognize those signs, Carr said. The training also teaches people how to get help for people deemed at risk for attempting suicide.
Family Counseling Center Parent Partner Paulette Blackmon said she thought the speakers were excellent and she was grateful to get the safeTALK training. She said as a parent partner, she is currently helping a local family that has a parent who is severely depressed and has considered suicide, so the conference was especially helpful.
"I deal with families in crisis," she said. "I'm just getting as much information as I can."
