Cincinnati Children’s Hospital is partnering with the Liv Project, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing youth suicide, to launch the Zero Suicide Initiative during September, which is Suicide Prevention Month. The goal is to have conversations with the community while working toward an aspirational mission of zero individuals under the hospital’s care dying by suicide.
The Zero Suicide Initiative is modeled after a national program that has been around for about two decades. Dr. Melissa Young, with Cincinnati Children’s, explained that the program means partnering with caregivers and others on their team to move toward safer suicide care. Christine Whelan, a family member who tragically lost her son Joe to suicide five years ago, is working with the initiative. Joe struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and an eating disorder stemming from childhood sexual abuse. Whelan emphasized wanting Joe’s short life to live longer by continuing to speak out on his behalf and educate others about concrete ways to help young people get through acute crisis moments.
A key intervention the program focuses on is the scale and spread of counseling and access to lethal means, pivoting the conversation away from simply getting someone to mental health services. Instead, the first step involves securing access to things that, if used in a suicide attempt, could result in serious injury or death—something historically that healthcare and mental behavioral health providers have not been trained to discuss. Starting in October, Cincinnati Children’s will be training its entire Mental and Behavioral Health Institute, approximately 900 individuals, with this becoming a required training component moving forward.
Christine’s message to families worried about someone struggling: hang in there and teach children that hard things will pass. She referenced her son Joe, who died in 2020 at the height of COVID, noting that she wishes he could have seen that COVID didn’t last forever. To make a donation supporting Cincinnati Children’s Zero Suicide mission, resources are available at WLWT.com.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.wlwt.com/article/cincinnati-childrens-hospital-nonprofit-reduce-youth-suicide/66108885