September 29, 2022 - the Indiana Public Safety weekly zoom, sponsored by the Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety, featured Kimble L. Richardson, M.S., LMHC, LCSW, LMFT, LCAC, ”presenting “Suicide is Preventable, Recovery is Possible, Treatment Works." Includes Guided Meditation led by Katie Carlson, EMI MTT300 graduate
Mindful Public Safety Hour: Suicide is Preventable with Kimble Richardson
John MacAdams:
Okay, well as we wrap up our observances of Recovery Month and Suicide Awareness & Prevention Month, we're very fortunate to have with us tonight for our feature presentation, Kimble Richardson. As always, Kimble brings excellent credentials, extensive experience and a heart for service in all that he does. Kimble has a Master's Degree in Counseling from Indiana University, and over 35 years experience in behavioral health. Currently he is the manager of Business Development and Referrals for the Community Health Network. He is licensed in Indiana as a mental health counselor, clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist and clinical addiction counselor. He holds an appointment by the governor and is the chair of the Indiana Behavioral Health and Human Services licensure board. He is the former president of the Indiana Mental Health Counselors Association, and was named both Mental Health Counselor of the Year and Distinguished Counselor of the Year by the Indiana Counseling Association. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Indianapolis; is an instructor for and clinical coordinator of several critical incident stress management teams. He coordinates the Indiana Department Five Resilience and Emotional Support Team. In addition, because Kimble doesn't sleep, Kimble is married and the father of adult twins. His wife is an intensive care nurse. He is a longtime musician-lifetime musician- currently playing drums in three bands, including the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Gordon Pipers: GO PIPERS! All right, welcome Kimble. Thank you for joining us.
Kimble Richardson:
Thank you so much, John. It's a pleasure and truly an honor to be here, and I'm so fortunate to have you and Robert as friends and all of you on this call. Thank you for joining. I'd like to give you a presentation about suicide awareness and some facts, some questions I'll pose to you. I’d like to have participation, if we could, certainly you can put responses to the chat; but I'd really like for you to unmute when we call for that and offer feedback if you care. So let's see if we can…before I pull that up, I just want to say that this is my 35th year in healthcare, and I remember way back in the day when I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s, when we were doing our practicum and internships, I saw one patient during that whole time who had a thought about suicide. One patient who had a thought about suicide, and that's unfathomable today.
That so unusual that most of us who do mental health counseling work see patients every single day who have thoughts of suicide, and some of us who do crisis work are seeing patients who have to be, perhaps hospitalized or placed in higher levels of care for their own safety. So we want to have an understanding that we've come a long way to understanding what things to look for, how to ask the questions. I remember as a young graduate student, I had to-this was part of our homework assignment-I stood in front of a mirror and practiced saying the word suicide, just so that it didn't sound awkward when I would ask somebody about it. So again, we've come a long way. We still have more yet to learn and thank you for allowing us to present even more about the subject. Let me share some slides with you, share screen. Wanna make sure that you can see one one slide and not the presenter mode, correct? All right. I love this motto, if you will. “Suicide is preventable. Recovery is possible. Treatment Works.” I didn't make it up, but it was made up by a colleague where I work, and I'm proud to say that it's something that we use at Community Health Network, Community Fairbanks Behavioral Health, which is our behavioral health product line within our healthcare network. And many of us have this in our offices, or those of us who still have offices, I don't have an office anymore after COVID; but we put this up, and it helps to remind us to, frankly, to have hope that we can make a difference and people can get better, and we do have the skills and the technology to help people. Every 40 seconds somewhere, somebody in the world dies by suicide, and we used to think that a suicide death would have certainly a ripple effect of those they leave behind; maybe six people, and that was woefully underestimated. We now think it's more along the lines of mid-20s to 30s, that a suicide can affect so many people. And although I guess technically, it is true and a possibility that someone could be happy about someone else's death, mostly, people are devastated, angry, confused, sad, upset, etc. So it's a worldwide issue, not just in the United States. Oddly enough, let's define a suicide and a suicide attempt, so that we're all on the same page and we're talking about the same thing. “A self-injurious act committed with at least some intent to die as a result.” Now my first question to you, audience, esteemed audience and colleagues, why do we say “at least some intent” and not full intention to die?
Robert Ohlemiller:
It’s I would say, because of the ambivalence that any of us can have about our own feelings and emotions at any given moment.
Kimble Richardson:
Yeah, and I'm telling you, I've lost my own patients to suicide. I've lost friends to suicide, and there is ambivalence there. So, we don't have to say that they're 100% certain that's what they want to do, that even if there's some intent, we can call it some wish, we can call a suicide attempt. Who decides the cause of someone's death?
Katie Carlson:
Coroner.
Kimble Richardson:
Who makes that decision? Okay, the coroner. Now it's not that way in every state, or this way in every statement: Who can be a coroner in our good Hoosier state? In other words, do you have to be a medical professional to be a coroner? I see some people shaking their heads, and the answer is, No. I think this is interesting. Do you not join me in thinking that's interesting? You don't have to be a medical professional to be a coroner in our state, you have to be elected. And most coroners have a good heart and an interest in serving, but not everybody understands what a suicide attempt is, and our data that we collect is only as good as the people who input that data. So why might a coroner not say that someone has died by suicide?
John MacAdams:
Well, I would think if they were in the employment of the State or the County, that might not reflect well.
Kimble Richardson:
That’s interesting. I've never thought about that before. That's certainly a possibility, John, good answer. What else? Let me ask you this question. Do you think that some people might be embarrassed or ashamed to have the cause of death be suicide on a death certificate? And if so, why?
John MacAdams:
Certainly, I would think surviving family members might have some sense of embarrassment or shame around that for sure, “they hadn’t done enough.”
Kimble Richardson:
That's true, and there is a statement. And I think sometimes, out of the goodness of their hearts, coroners might believe that not listing a death as a suicide, is helping the family: to perhaps be more private, confidential, or to not face the shame of that stigma. And the flip side of that is that we won't know. We'll never know how many deaths are caused by suicide. It’s probably woefully under-reported.
Katie Carlson:
Religion.
Kimble Richardson:
Okay, interesting religion, right? Now, it used to be some religions would say “You're going to hell, you're going to go to hell if you died by suicide.” Some religions have changed their tune on that a little bit, and some still keep it that's their teachings. Yeah, interesting. Definition of a suicide attempt is “the potential for injury.” You don't have to actually have injured yourself, just have that potential. Interesting story: we tried to get a psychiatric commitment on a patient a couple of years ago at the hospital where I work because we thought they were a danger to themselves. They had made, in our opinion, a suicide attempt by trying to shoot themselves. And I remember the judge asking the question of our doctor, “Well, was the gun loaded?” And we thought to ourselves, who cares? You know, it's the thought behind it, or the symbolism, perhaps. And we said, “Well, the facts are no's, sir, the gun wasn't loaded.” And he said, “Well, there's no commitment then.” And I thought that was a shame, because while we do want to respect people's freedom and liberties, we also have a duty to protect people who might be compromised in their thinking or depression or current state of health, that they would have those thoughts. Do you see here that it says, at the last bullet point, “Someone's intention and their behavior have to be linked together.” Let me give you an example of why that's important. How do we know a drug overdose is a suicide attempt?
Katie Carlson:
You don't.
Kimble Richardson:
I mean, a lot of times we don't, that's exactly right, Katie, a lot of times we don't, and a lot of times we'll never know; but in order to classify it as a suicide attempt, we have to know “is the person's intention and their behavior linked together? Did they take an overdose accidentally, or was their intention to end their lives?” And sometimes we don't know, and so in those cases, oftentimes we can't class them as a suicide. The latest set of data that we have for the leading cause of death, at least in the United States, that I could find anyway, 2018, that's a fairly dead slide, but you could see that listed across the top of the x-axis, if you will, are age groups; y-axis are numbers one to 10, causes of death. Everything you see in the color green is a death by suicide. And so you can see, starting at age 10, little children, starting at age 10, up to young adulthood, 34, the second leading cause of death. That's very overwhelming and devastating.
All right, a little quiz for you: What job category in the United States do people have the most suicides? What kind of jobs do they have?
John MacAdams:
I've seen a number of headlines, but I think I heard emergency room doctors?
Kimble Richardson:
Okay, that's a good guess. John.
Robert Ohlemiller:
Law enforcement officers?
Kimble Richardson:
What kind of officers?
Robert Ohlemiller:
Law enforcement officers.
Kimble Richardson:
Okay. That’s gonna be yes, in a certain way, Robert, I'll tell you in a minute.
Sherry Butler:
I think too, caregivers and not just of people. The Veterinary Society experiences rampant suicide.
Kimble Richardson:
That's really interesting, I didn't know that, to be honest, and sad too. Any other guesses? Not quite got it yet. Robert is close.
Troy Terrence:
Kimble, how about dentists?
Kimble Richardson:
That's often a guess Troy, you’re in good company. I mean, frankly, let's think about it. Who actually loves to go to the dentist? I mean, you know, I love my dentist, but who loves to go to the dentist? They don’t get enough respect. Well, let me tell you, that this was a shock to me a couple of years ago when I learned this, but it's actually farmers, professional fishing folks and forestry workers, followed pretty closely, and they're a little bit closer together now, is construction industry. And when I say amazing, I mean not necessarily in a good way. I was like, “Wow. I didn't see that coming. I wasn't aware of that.” But I can tell you when I found this out, a few years ago, I started making calls to construction companies here in Indianapolis, where I live. I called human resources departments. “Hey, were you guys aware,” (just a cold call) “Were you aware that your industry has the second death for suicides? Would you like to have a presentation? I'll do it for free.” How many? How many takers did I get for that offer of my time? Zero. People were nice about it, but it was crickets, until about a year. About a year later, the construction industry contacted me and said, “Hey, we're putting together a program on suicide in the construction industry. Would you like to be on our panel as a speaker?” Absolutely, I would be honored to do that. So sometimes people don't know, and you got to put the information out in front of them a few times before they catch on and wanna do something about it. But Robert, if you tease out genders, interestingly, females, female law enforcement professionals have the highest rate of suicide. We want to be careful and keep our eyes open for that information. I feel very lucky to work at an organization where we put a lot of emphasis on suicide prevention and awareness. Several years ago, we got a very large grant to do some outreach about suicide awareness and education to our primary care physician offices in Central Indiana, and we targeted middle-aged men. Middle-aged, according to this study, was men aged 34 to 65 and we try to educate physician offices, outpatient offices, “Hey, here's some things to look for. If you see a patient who's a man in this age group, here are some things to look for. And if you find these things, you might want to ask about suicide.” What kinds of things do you think we want to pay attention to in middle-aged men that might cause us to ask the question, “Are you having thoughts of suicide?”
John MacAdams:
Isolating? Particularly around divorce and separation and then isolation.
Kimble Richardson:
I'm gonna give that to you, Jonathan, it is one of the issues to pay attention to. They call it “intimate partner problems,” or “relationship problems with a significant other.” So that's one. There's four.
Katie Carlson:
Financial issues?
Kimble Richardson:
Okay, financial issues is another. Really good, Katie. So problems with jobs. And I know this is going to soun,d perhaps to your audience, a sexist comment, I'll just put it out there ahead of time. But in my experience, working with male patients, if they are starting to have problems in their jobs, they're having real problems, because that might be the last area of their life that they're trying to trying to hang on to and think it's okay, and if they're starting to crack under the pressure of their job, then be really careful about suicide. Okay, finances, relationship problems. As we get older, what other kind of problems do we have?
Sherry Butler:
Our health problems?
Kimble Richardson:
Hello, very good Sherry. Problems with health. And then this one, most people don't get it. Most people don't know about this one, but interestingly enough, criminal and legal problems and that can happen to people in all kinds of professions. So if you know of or you see or work with men that have anything like this come up in their lives, you want to pay attention. And especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, we've had some increases in suicide. The Senior Director of Healthcare Innovation for the American Psychological Association: nobody is immune to the stress of the pandemic. Now, several years ago, there was a study done where we asked emergency room doctors “If you have a patient who comes in to see you in the emergency department and they report or you have a suspicion that they're having thoughts of suicide,
do you ask them if they have access to firearms?” Out of 100% what percent of emergency room doctors would ask this question? It's not high enough. I'll tell you what it was about, about 50%. So these are very smart people, smart learned people, and we weren't asking one of the most important questions that has to do with safety. If someone's having thoughts of suicide, “Do you have access to any kind of weapons, especially firearms?” Suicide rates decrease significantly in states that require which two of the following: a background check guide, locks, a waiting period, open carry restrictions?
Katie Carlson:
A and C.
Kimble Richardson:
Okay, who said that?
Katie Carlson:
Katie.
Kimble Richardson:
All right. Katie, you get a virtual sticker because you're right, A and C. And I'm a mental health professional. I'm not anti gun, but I am in favor of doing some things that might help people stay safer, especially if they're compromised by a health related issue, whether it's physical or psychiatric. True or false: when it comes to preventing suicide, risk factor studies have found that locking a firearm is as safe as not having a firearm? Answer: false. Now I forgot to mention, part of the grant that we had for middle aged men was not only educating primary care physician offices about suicide, but also part of the grant was to educate gun shops and firing ranges about suicide, and when I found out about that, I said, let me add it. I work with first responders all the time. I know lots of police officers. We got this! It took me a year and a half of asking to get one gun shop owner in Central Indiana to agree to a presentation. That’s all.
We also were going to offer people free gun locks as part of the grant, but we got one gun shop owner who said, “Yeah, we're all about safety. Come on in. Do a presentation.” He had every one of his staff members there. We gave a presentation, it actually made the news, and one of the people said “Wow. About a month ago,” (now this was a couple years ago that we did this presentation) “but about a month ago we had a guy come in who wanted to shoot at our range, so we fitted him with a gun, and we got him all set up, and he went out to the range and came back about five minutes later, and he put the gun up on the counter. He said, “Hey, I can't, I can't do this.” The guy said, “what do you mean?” He goes, “I just can't go through with it.” The guy says “Well, maybe we didn't fit you with the right gun. Let us, let us get you the right gun for you. He goes, “No, I was gonna kill myself.” And he said, “Oh, oh, okay, I see what you're saying.” And they weren’t ready for that. He did know and understand, okay, maybe I better call the police and and get you to a hospital for an assessment. And they did, but he said, “I had no idea that that could ever happen.” So other states are very open to these kinds of presentations and cooperations with mental health. Not so much in other states. Highest rate by country, you know, I looked at several scales. It's very interesting to know that there was no two scales that were exactly alike. Suicide deaths are reported differently in different countries. United States generally fell somewhere around the 40s. Quiz: what's the leading method of suicide attempt in the United States? If you said overdose, you were correct, and this is the important word to keep in mind, suicide “attempt.” Next question, I'm changing one word: what's the leading method of suicide “death” in the United States?
Robert Ohlemiller:
Firearms.
Kimble Richardson:
There you go, the answer is firearms. That's why we're asking these questions, and why that study of emergency room doctors was telling; that we weren't asking enough and we weren't asking directly. Which statement is true: “most police departments will temporarily store firearms for families who request it.” “Most police departments won't store firearms for families. Or “some will and some won't.” Answer: letter C, some will and some won’t, depending on where you live. You know, one of the toughest decisions, I know that I work very closely, some of us do who are mental health professionals, work very closely with psychiatrists, and one of the toughest decisions we've ever had to make is sometimes our patients would be gun owners. They would come to us for depression, anxiety, what have you, they would start to feel better and say, we want our guns back. That's a heavy burden as a mental health professional to have to say, yes or no to that question, especially if the question is yes; and especially if this is a gun aficionado, someone who generally is careful and safe around guns, but likes to shoot or hunt, which might be one of their coping skills and pastimes, and you're keeping them from that. At the same time, you're keeping them safe. It's a very difficult decision to have to make. Suicides are more common where: cities, suburbs, rural, or unfortunately, all equal? Okay, correct answer is rural. Women die by suicide about four times more often than men, true or false?
The answer is false, actually, of about three fourths of suicide deaths are men, especially Caucasian men. True or false, about 50% of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, mostly depression? Seem reasonable.? What do you think about 50%, do you think that's high or low??
Katie Carlson:
I think it's low.
Kimble Richardson:
Okay, that's correct. We believe the answer is more along the lines of about 90%. It is true that not everybody who dies by suicide will have diagnosable, not that they already have something diagnosed, but they could, if you look back in their medical history, but about 90% do. From those 90% what are some of the top things that we look for that might be related to suicide? Depression: probably not so surprising. Substance use disorders, and psychosis. Why do we look for substance use disorders? What's significant about that?
Troy Terrence:
Co-occurring?
Kimble Richardson:
Co-occurring, and then what else? Well, what we do know is when people use drugs or alcohol, it lowers your inhibition, and it increases your impulsiveness, which is a bad combination if you're having thoughts of suicide. What about psychosis? What is it about that that worries us?
Anyone ever hear of something called a command hallucination, that you're hearing a voice that tells you to kill yourself? That's a serious, dangerous situation, and oftentimes we'll want to hospitalize a person for their own safety. So if you're having these issues, we want to ask. If someone is intoxicated and they're talking about suicide and you're seeing them in the emergency department or your crisis department, ah, just let them sober up and they'll get over it: true or false? Hopefully you say false. While it is true, sometimes people change their minds when they're not drunk or stoned, we do want to take it seriously and make those serious assessment. Our good fellow Hoosiers: are there more suicides or homicides in our state?
Answer: more suicides. Most suicides, true or false, happen around the winter holidays?
Troy Terrence:
False.
Kimble Richardson:
Troy Terrence says false. Why do you say that, sir?
Troy Terrence:
Because usually coming out of it, out of the winter, going into spring. I think there's more after the holidays.
Kimble Richardson:
You might be one of the first people who's gotten that question right. Most people say “Yeah, absolutely, winter holidays.” And while it is true that there is a lot of depression in the winter holidays, sometimes associated with less light in our Hoosier State, most suicides happen in the springtime, which sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it? Because spring is synonymous with life, rebirth, renewal. But we do have to be careful, because it's oftentimes when people have a little bit of energy and thoughts of suicide, that's very difficult. When people have no energy and thoughts of suicide, it's still dangerous, but they don't have a lot of energy. When they get a little bit more energy, we have to be careful. Even in my culture, which is in healthcare, death by suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in a hospital, inside of a hospital. So I wanted you to just be aware of some of those facts. And I thought, being a mental health professional of several years, under several years of practice and experience, that I knew some things about suicide, and when I took some of those quizzes over the last few years, I didn’t get it right. So we can all learn and all become more aware. One of the things we can do is take some training and extra training.
John MacAdams:
Kimble, just that slide before, those are patients inside the hospital? You're seeing patients inside hospitals are committing suicide well after they've been admitted to the hospital?
Kimble Richardson:
That’s correct.
John MacAdams:
Wow.
Kimble Richardson:
And even now, it happens anywhere on any unit, even in the psychiatric unit, people can die by suicide. And I'm not saying it's about money, but we at Community Health Network spent about $2 million to make our inpatient units safe, in what we call “ligature free,” or as ligature free as possible, so that there's not things that somebody could tie something around to asphyxiate themselves. So doorknobs are different. We don't have hinges on our doors. We have collapsible shower curtain rods, all kind of things that you know you might not think about on other units. So good question. There are other kinds of trainings that you can be engaged in. QPR is one. Some of us here have had that training, I’m a QPR trainer. There actually might be others here who are trainers as well. The only training on here that I see that's specific just for behavioral health professionals is AMSR, the assessing and managing suicide risk. All the others, anybody can take those training. Some are two hour trainings, like QPR. Some are four, some one day and some two day trainings. Wanted you to be aware of some resources: The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, that specifically mentions the Indiana chapter, but it is all over the United States. There are chapters that raise funds, raise awareness, provide support groups, information groups, and just look for afsp.org, their website for more information. One of the things they do is they offer community walks. This was one of the very first walks in Indianapolis about 15 years ago. You can see me next to the tent up, I'm the guy sitting down. I had been up for many hours that day already because I was helping to coordinate. That was one of our first ones in Indianapolis. We had a few 100 people, raised maybe $3,000. We just had our walk a couple of weeks ago, and we raised, I think we made, $400,000 for that walk. Very, very proud of that. This young lady here in the lawn here in the forefront was the captain of the ladies soccer team at the University of Louisville, who walked in memory of her mother who died by suicide, and she brought her whole team there to walk it with her in supportive of that very, very touching, nice young lady. Some other things to be aware of: To Write Love on Her art and the American Association of Suicidology, also, other resources that you can look to for information and support. Most of you know this: 988 is a new number as of July, mid- July this year, that replaces the National Suicide
Prevention Hotline. So everywhere in the United States, you should be able to press 988 and get connected to a crisis professional who can give you information, referrals, resources that can keep you safe and connected to health. We call it the “Power of Zero,” where I work again, “Suicide is Preventable. Recovery is Possible, Treatment Works.” A website that we created, and we don't have time to talk about the Columbia Suicide Prevention Rating Scale. Maybe we do that another time. But here's my contact information. If you ever need to contact me or want to ask a question at a different time, that’s convenient to you. That's my same cell phone number I've had since the invention of cell phones, so feel free to call me. And again, thank you all so much for allowing this information to be shared.
John MacAdams:
Thank you so much, Kimble. Just so much, so much information. Some of it absolutely rocking my understanding of what we're talking about here. And we have a few minutes, I would very much like to open it up for folks to comment or have questions. I'm going to start because I've got a burning question. I've had a very small amount of training. I do a little volunteer work in a jail, and so I'm in there as a volunteer chaplain, and it's requested to chaplains to ireport, right, if we have a sense that there's a potential for suicidal thinking that we report to the administration right? And so they've supported us with a little bit of training from a professional organization, couple of hours, maybe one hour. And so I learned a lot, because what was presented was to really feel encouraged as just a lay person, to ask very directly, you know, are you thinking of hurting yourself? Are you planning? How are you planning to hurt yourself? Are you thinking of killing yourself? Like really using the very direct language. And then asking, you know, how are you going to do it? What do the plans look like? Having those conversations. And that there is a myth, and certainly I held it myself, that bringing up the idea and having it sort of brought out in language might increase the probability that it's going to happen, that we should maybe not talk about it, “let’s not talk about it, because maybe it'll go away.” But this was the complete opposite of that, let’s talk about it. So can you just speak about that a little?
Kimble Richardson:
Well, I would simply say you're 100% correct, that it is a myth, that if you bring up, “are you having thoughts of suicide?” I mean, never in my career, I’m one person, but I’ve had 35 years of experience, has anyone said, “Actually, no, but now that you mentioned it…” you know? I mean, that’s never happened, ever. Now is it possible, I guess? But really, the opposite happens, which is, okay, you brought it up. I'm relieved that you brought up the subject, and maybe you’re person that it's safe for me to admit openly, yes, I have been having these thoughts. So it really is a myth. Now someone might get offended or irritated or even angry, that you brought it up. Okay, I can handle that, and I'm willing to risk that, to ask that question; but it typically doesn't cause people to be suicidal.
John MacAdams:
Okay, so that was that question was, “are you thinking about it?” So then the next part was, “a, or have you planned? What is your plan?” And then the third area of inquiry was like, “when? What's your timeline?” Are those accurate?
Kimble Richardson:
Yeah, in a way. It’s not quite the language of one of the rating scales that we can use. But it’s similar. So there are some questions. There’s no sure way for us to completely predict suicide, that I know of. And I’m looking to Sherry too, I don’t think there’s anything that we have that can completely predict that. But there are some things that can help us understand someone’s risk. And they might be low some, sometimes people just say “you're either lower your high,” okay, but there is sometimes a gradation, low, medium, high risk that they can help things like, for example, people out in the field, if you're Fire, EMS, if you’re a police officer, and you're out in the field and you want to do some suicide assessment risks, you can quantify it now. And then when you call into the crisis department and say, “Hey, I've got, you know, John or Jane Doe, we've assessed them on the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale. They scored this score. Do you have any suggestions for us at this point?” And again, it's not solely based on that, but we can make a little bit better recommendations on what to do for someone.
John MacAdams:
Thank you very much.
Katie Carlson:
I have a couple comments. One, I don't remember, and I may have cheated or had some memory because I had seen this presentation in peer support, but over the summer I was at a big concert in Garfield Park, and To Write on Her Arms was there, and I don't remember if that was in your presentation, but I've got, like, a sticker on my book that says “your story is important” and it’s from there, it's from their booth. It was really cool, they're a neat organization.
Kimble Richardson:
We did have that, in my presentation, and so you're right, good to know they’re out and about..
Katie Carlson:
Oh yeah. They were great. They were they were cool to interact with, and stuff too. Like, very passionate. But you know, when I was the public information officer in the jail, we used to have just all of a sudden, probably in about the middle of the time, like maybe in 2014-2015 or later, we just started having so many inmate suicides. And we used to be like, “UGH.” We felt like, when the media would report on them, that we would end up getting more suicides, and so we'd be kind of like, quiet, like, we don't wanna, you know, we felt like it was that thing. So we ended up, and Robert, you may have been involved in this too, we ended up just going all in on talking. You couldn't turn a corner in the jail without seeing the word suicide. I mean, it was everywhere. And I don't think we have that quite replicated in our new facility yet. But, you know, it's hard to say whether it worked 100% you know, I'm sure it wasn't 100% but, you know, our fears of talking about it and it going up were, you know, unfounded, and it was just, you know, it was a good practice.
Robert Ohlemiller:
As I recall, it was not only directed at the residents, but also in elevators and hallways, really directed at staff as well, which is a good thing.
Katie Carlson:
Yeah, and especially to get staff to kind of understand the signs and stuff. But we even went so far that there was an automatic message at the end of every phone call when you got off with the inmates that said,” if you have any feeling like that, like then maybe suicidal. You know, stay on and we'll direct you to the hotline” and stuff like that. So I’ll never fear talking about anything like that oo much because of having that kind of real practice of just plastering the walls with with the word suicide, and getting more comfortable with it and using it, talking about it.
Robert Ohlemiller:
There's a lot of proactive work being done in the jail on that too. I had a former mentee who spent several months in the Marion County Jail, and he was talking about how they were going around and really talking to inmates in the blocks, trying to get a handle on depression and getting a handle on suicide rates, and trying to let people know there was assistance available.
Katie Carlson:
Well, and in Kimble’s presentation, you know, legal issues were number two?
Kimble Richardson:
Well, not in order, but it was one of the top four, yes,
Katie Carlson:
But a lot of the time it would happen after court or coming off of drugs, going through withdrawal.
Kimble Richardson:
Now this to say: we're not naive. We know sometimes people say that they're suicidal as a manipulative gesture. We are aware of that. That's a problem too, and this is someone who doesn't have very good coping skills typically. But again, we do want to take things seriously and try our best to ferret out what level of risk someone may be under.
Katie Carlson:
Yeah. You know, one other odd note is that we have never had a suicide, in all the years I've been there, we've never had a suicide occur in our suicide watch section. I mean, because once you get there, then you're just, you know, everybody knows. So nobody to us had ever gotten to that, you know, to that place, so. Thank you Kimble. I’m gonna hop off, this was wonderful.
Robert Ohlemiller:
Night, Katie. This was an eye opening presentation in many ways.Thank you.
Kimble Richardson:
Thanks, everybody.
John MacAdams:
Well, thank you for the work, and I'm really interested. I took a quick screenshot of all those different trainings that you had listed up there. I mean, those seem to be great. If they're accessible to just any old civilian; pop in for a couple hours or I think one of them was a half day? Wow. How much value is that?
Kimble Richardson:
John, some are some you can find free and some you'd have to pay for but, yeah, yeah, check them out for sure. They're all evidence based, and they're good.
Sherry Butler:
The QPR is especially good, I think.
Kimble Richardson:
Yeah, that's a good you know, some of the presentation I gave is from that.
Sherry Butler:
Yeah, and it's just, it really is. It's easy, it's for everyone. And it just, you know, I think a lot of times, “What do I do? What do I do?” So, you know, QRP: this is what you do, question and refer and..”
Kimble Richardson:
QPR: Question, Persuade, Refer.
Sherry Butler:
Right, Question, Persuade, Refer. And it really, really, it’s a quick and easy, it helps us in those situations.
Robert Ohlemiller:
Are your slides available then Kimble? If we could get them, we could share them with people.
Kimble Richardson:
Let me think about that. I have had, in the past, I don't want to, I'm not trying to keep information from people, but three times in my career, I've had my work essentially stolen from me and presented as someone else's work, and it has soured me.
Robert Ohlemiller:
I understand and it's not the same as being there live with the slide set either. I know it's much more informational when you're live.
Kimble Richardson:
But let me, let me take the ones that are like, you know, public domain information and I’ll send them to you.
Robert Ohlemiller:
Thank you. Everybody be well, and thanks for a good evening.
Sherry Butler:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
John MacAdams:
We'll see you all in October.
Troy Terrence:
Thanks. Kimble. You did a great job.
John MacAdams:
Fabulous, fabulous Kimble. Thank you so much.
Comentários