March 29, 2024

Jasper County Cares: Suicide prevention

By Kristena Strum

We have begun to understand how overwhelming experiences affect our innermost sensations and our relationship to out physical reality — the core of who we are. We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present (Van Der Kolk, 2014).

There is a plethora of reason why an individual might become traumatized from abuse to war. It’s our minds way of saying we can’t handle this situation anymore. A lot of the times our brains become so damaged and can no longer function the way they used to, or they never had the chance to fully develop in the first place.

Understanding trauma and how in affects us as humans can help in our search to understand suicide and suicide prevention. For example, 22 veterans a day take their own life, and this is directly linked to the trauma suffered from combat. The suicide rate in our younger population is rising significantly and can be linked back to trauma as well. Trauma can cause anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and many other mental health issues. It’s the main contributor to addiction, as you see with veterans and alcoholism, and you will see most of these being diagnosed together — a comorbid diagnosis where one or more conditions are diagnosed with each other. All of this can be linked back to why a person might decide to die by suicide. Of course, each case is unique and there is no one cause as to why someone chooses to take their own life.

So how do we begin to understand how all of this can affect us as individuals and as a community? It can start with better education about mental health, better access to mental health care, less stigma and just being a good person. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand how someone else’s struggle because we haven’t gone through that experience; this is completely understandable. However, it can make the world of a difference to show empathy toward a person who might be suffering. There is no one quick fix to mental illness, trauma, or suicide, but we can make the world a little bit easier to live in by being decent human beings.

Kristena Strum is Suicide Prevention Advocate for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. This column is submitted from the Jasper County Cares Coalition, a group of community partners who aim to address the health, safety and well-being of community members impacted by substance use and mental illness. The group meets at 11 a.m. the second Tuesday of every month at the EJH Beard Administration Center in Newton.
For more information about suicide and suicide prevention and/or to volunteer go to AFSP.org