September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month
By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness about suicide and educate the public on how to help prevent it.
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and Kentucky. In Kentucky, it is the 12th leading cause of death, with 800 Kentuckians dying by suicide each year. Kentucky’s suicide rate is higher than the national average, at 17.5 per 100,000 people compared to 14.2 per 100,000 nationally. Additionally, suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for Kentuckians ages 10-34, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Kentucky has several resources to help people who are thinking about suicide, including the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which recently celebrated its third year of operation.
Kentucky’s 988 service, based in Kentucky’s 14 Community Mental Health Centers, connects people experiencing a mental-health or substance-use crisis with a trained counselor. 988 allows people in crisis to call, chat or text 988 to receive support 24/7. The calls are free and confidential.
“According to SAMHSA, nearly 16.5 million people in our country have reached out to 988 for help in the last three years. And again, more than 191,000 are Kentuckians,” Hannah Brosnan, executive director of Mental Health America of Kentucky, told Kentucky Health News.
And though the Trump administration eliminated a dedicated LGBTQ+ crisis line in July, the 988 crisis line is available to everyone.
In addition, the Trevor Project continues to provide free and confidential suicide crisis support to LGBTQ+ young people, via text at 678-678, phone at 1-866-488-7386 or through the chat line on its website (thetrevorproject.org/get-help/).
A 2024 Trevor Project survey found that 43% of LGBTQ+ youth in Kentucky seriously considered suicide in the past year, including 50% of transgender and nonbinary young people.
Brosnan noted that when she is talking to people about suicide prevention, she often encourages them to go ahead and put these numbers in their child’s phone. This, she said, eliminates one step when a youth is in crisis.
“It’s already in their phone. They don’t have to remember the number,” she said. “So I definitely encourage folks to include those texts and call numbers for the Trevor Project as well.”
EmPATH unit
Kentuckians also have access to immediate, emergent care for those experiencing a mental health crisis at UK HealthCare’s EmPATH unit. EmPATH stands for Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing.
EmPATH is a mental health emergency room located on the campus of Eastern State Hospital at 1354 Bull Lea Road in Lexington. EmPATH has a separate, dedicated entrance from the hospital and is open 24/7, 365 days a year. The unit is designed to provide immediate access to mental health care and resources. Referrals are not needed to come to EmPATH.
“We served about 5,000 people in our first year,” Marc Woods, chief nursing officer for Eastern State Hospital and one of the leaders of EmPATH, said in a University of Kentucky news release. “And of those 5,000, about two-thirds were suicidal or having thoughts of suicide… We have a local affirmation that this is an issue we have that is prevalent and that we need to manage.”
Lindsey Jasinski, chief administrative officer for Eastern State Hospital and co-leader of EmPATH, said it’s important to talk about suicide even though it’s a difficult topic.
“It’s hushed, and it’s tucked away,” Jasinski said in the release. “But we have to talk about this topic. It’s a preventable cause of death if folks can get access to care and intervention with specialists. What’s important to remember, too, is that this could be any of us — it could be our family members, it could be our friends. Many times, we don’t know unless we ask those questions specifically to understand what’s going on with someone.”
Woods and Jasinski discussed suicide prevention and treatment on an episode of “Behind the Blue.” Here are some of the things they talked about.
QPR training
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2023, roughly 12.8 million Americans said they had serious thoughts about suicide, and around 1.5 million suicide attempts were reported.
It might be easy — and potentially, more comfortable — to dismiss someone who has spoken of their suicidal thoughts as a “cry for attention” and not get involved. But that’s not the right mindset to have, said Woods.
“Whether they’re truly suicidal or not shouldn’t even enter our minds,” he said. “It’s not up to us to make those decisions… and none of us would ever want to be on the wrong end of that decision, right? I think any time somebody is making comments or statements like that, it’s a cry out for help in some way.”
To learn how to help someone who is having suicidal thoughts, Kentucky offers QPR training, which stands for Question, Persuade and Refer.
QPR training allows individuals to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis, interrupt that crisis and direct that person to proper care, according to the release.
“It’s like CPR — we’re trained on how to respond in an emergency,” Jasinski said. “What QPR teaches is how to listen, how to validate and how to ask questions.”
She adds that the question element of QPR is important, especially because it’s a common misconception that speaking about suicide leads to suicide or “puts the idea in someone’s head.”
“It’s important to be able to ask the question, ‘Are you feeling like hurting yourself?’” Jasinski said. “’Do you have thoughts of wanting to die?’ Those kinds of questions, those are hard to ask someone. But it can actually be very normalizing and validating to give someone the space to say, ‘Yeah.’”
Once a conversation like this is initiated, Woods and Jasinski both emphasize that it’s not the listener’s role to provide help — but rather to persuade the person to seek help and refer them to available resources.
Another key element to QPR training is to ensure that the person’s environment is safe — and that could mean temporarily removing potentially dangerous items from their reach, including sharp objects, firearms, medications and more.
Free QPR training is available for all Kentuckians at kyqpr.ukhc.org — a one-hour course that could help you save a life.
Other mental health resources
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) offers resources and has a number of affiliates in Kentucky — here’s an interactive map of locations and contact information.
The UK Cooperative Extension Service has a representative in every county in Kentucky and can be a good start to find local resources and resources at the university.
“If you’re having a hard time finding local resources for yourself, call 211, contact NAMI, contact us,” said Brosnan, with Mental Health America of Kentucky. “Support is there. You are seen and you are cared for. Everyone’s mental health matters.”