Mark Your Calendars and Get Involved in Suicide Prevention Awareness

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September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, September 5 – 11 is National Suicide Prevention Week , and September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day. You can get involved, here’s how:

The San Mateo County Suicide Prevention Committee (SPC) is planning community events, trainings and a communication campaigns.  The SPC will partner with other groups to conduct an Older Adult Suicide Prevention 101 training, provide suicide prevention psychoeducation in local schools and host communication campaign that includes the press, radio and social media.

The SPC is a group of community partners that come together to prevent suicide through information sharing, collaborative projects and inter-agency partnerships. The SPC has dedicated to work on the following 2016 priorities:

  1. Culturally specific suicide prevention education to reduce stigma
  2. Inform older adult service providers about depression screening tools
  3. Develop suicide prevention school protocol for secondary schools

To get involved with the above priorities and projects, you can join the bimonthly SPC meetings which take place:

Fourth Wednesday of the even months
(e.g. February, April, June, August, October, December)
1:30-3:00pm
San Mateo County Transit District – Gallagher Conference Room
1250 San Carlos Ave, San Carlos CA 94070

You can also plan activities and events in your community or organization by using the “Suicide Prevention Week Toolkit 2016: Know the Signs. Find the Words. Reach Out” created by Each Mind Matters (California’s mental health movement funded by the voter-approved Mental Health Services Act (Prop. 63)).

To receive above updates or more information, contact Sylvia Leung (sleung@smcgov.org or 650-578-7165. You can also learn more about suicide prevention resources at www.smchealth.org/bhrs/SuicidePrevention.