Topics Orbiting Suicide

Discussions about mental health and suicide often lead to a lot of questions. Those questions can lead to productive and insightful conversations. Topics Orbiting Suicide was created answer those questions and facilitate those discussions.

Hope for the Day’s newest presentation offering, as the name says, covers some of the topics that surround suicide. The first session will be on March 10 and it will discuss language, understanding self harm, and what to say to someone who has lost someone to suicide.

Each of these topics can have a lot of nuance, so it’s important to be as informed as possible.

Learning about the best language to use during these conversations can help create a more inclusive environment. According to Hope for the Day’s Director of Education Allison Herman, using informed language “can be really helpful to facilitate a stigma-free conversation.”

Language ties into each other topic as well, informing word choices and phrases used throughout conversations. It is especially relevant when discussing what to say to someone who has lost someone to suicide.

Grief is a complicated topic and it looks different for everyone.

“We get a lot of conversations about grief and it's a very specific type of grief as well,” Herman said. “It's a very unique conversation. So there's some tips about what to say or what not to say, and also some great resources that we can send folks to who are going through grief.”

Sharing those resources is vital to making sure people have access to the help they need. Letting people know that they have options can be a useful step on their mental health journey.

This is also relevant when discussing self harm. By understanding self harm, we can dispel some of the stigmas that surround the topic.

“There's been a big spike in self harm in the last couple of years and talking about self harm, being a coping skill and not a suicide attempt is also really important to make sure that people are getting the right information,” Herman said.

Sharing that information on topics that people are curious about is really the whole goal of the presentation. To make it as accessible as possible, there are no prerequisites required to attend this session. Maybe you’d choose to attend because you first attended The Things We Don’t Say or maybe this is your introduction to the conversation.

“It's a great conversation starting point, if any of those topics interest you,” Herman said.

Throughout our various education sessions and outreach experiences, we get a lot of questions. Language, understanding self harm, and talking about grief have been a few of the most common ones, but we’re always open to expanding the conversation.

“Let us know if there's a specific conversation that you want to have,” Herman said. “If enough people ask specific questions, I'll expand on it because I think it's really important to get the education that people already want to have.”

Topics Orbiting Suicide will be taught via Zoom on March 10 at noon CST and March 28 at 6 p.m. CST. You can register for either of those sessions at peervention.org.