The Geauga County Suicide Coalition was formed in 2005 with the stated goal of reducing suicides in the county. This goal is to be fulfilled by reducing the stigma surrounding suicide by raising public awareness through an education and public awareness campaign: by providing gatekeeper training to professionals and social service organizations most likely to be in contact with persons contemplating suicide: and by providing suicide prevention education to identified stakeholders, community groups, and civic organizations.
The Training/Education and Media/Public Relations subcommittees meet quarterly and it is the ongoing activities of these two subcommittees and the full Coalition that this narrative will address.
The goals of the Training/Education subcommittee are to provide Gatekeeper and Speakers Bureau trainings to the Geauga County community. This subcommittee continues to contact community gatekeepers and stakeholders, schedule trainings and suicide prevention awareness and prevention presentations, and provide the core group of Speakers Bureau and Gatekeeper training presenters. The Training/Education Subcommittee has developed PowerPoint trainings and presentations targeted for identified priority populations.
The Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT, is another educational effort of the Coalition. It is designed to provide training for law enforcement to work with crisis in the community, improve communication between law enforcement and mental health providers, track outcomes for calls to law enforcement that involve mental health emergencies to monitor dispositions and improve both the law enforcement’s mental health provider’s response and to promote diversions of persons with mental illness from the criminal justice system when treatment is appropriate.
The goal of the Media/Public relations subcommittee is to implement the county-wide Public Awareness Campaign to increase knowledge and reduce stigma associated with suicide in Geauga County. To this end, the subcommittee has developed a poster and wallet card brochure and distributed them to locations identified by the priority population subcommittee. The Media/Public relations subcommittee continues to identify new locations for these materials at community meeting places and other public access locations, and seeks ways to reach the identified populations through press releases and proposed media campaigns utilizing local media.
