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She suffered from a terrible illness. The illness is called depression. Many of her friends did not even know that Sue was ill. She hid it, wanting to always appear as a strong and fearless polo player. How can a polo player get the blues like that?  They are active, busy, pursuing a sport that they love and do well in, and look to be the picture of health and fitness.  But, it happened. It happens.

Our polo club wanted to do something both as a tribute to Sue, and to help others who might be suffering silently as she was.

Starting in 2013, and every year since save one, we teamed up with Suicide Prevention & Crisis Service of Tompkins County, the Central NY Polo Club, and the Cornell Polo Club to host a benefit polo game to remember Sue and spread the word.

Ann Michel

Read more posts for Remembering:Stories of Suicide Loss here.

We are postponing Dancing for Life, originally scheduled for March 21, 2020. We will try to reschedule later this spring. For those who have purchased tickets or made donations, we look forward to seeing you then.

Dancing for Life, now in its 8^th year, is our major fundraising event for the Crisisline.  This year we’re raising funds to support an additional 1,000 callers by restoring local overnight service. Our community’s need for this service has not ended. We count on your gifts to help us reach this important goal.

The most important thing you can do right now to support SPCS is to make a donation. Here is how you can help: You can make donations on the Dancing for Life peer-to-peer fundraising page at https://ithacacrisis.networkforgood.com/projects/89769-2020-dancing-for-life-fundraiser.

Or you can start your own fundraising campaign by inviting family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors to make donations, on the peer-to-peer fundraising page.

If you have lost a loved one to suicide, it can be very helpful to sit with others who related to your loss.

This support group will resume regular meetings on September 3, 2019 and will be facilitated by Sheila McCue, LCSW.

The group will meet on the First and Third Tuesdays of each month from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, at 124 E. Court Street in downtown Ithaca.

Please call 607-272-1505 with questions and to reserve a spot in the group.

Yesterday evening, the President signed into law The National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act, legislation that was introduced in the Senate by Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Chris Stewart, both from Utah. The Act authorizes that a study be undertaken by SAMHSA, the VA and the FCC to explore the feasibility and impact of designating a 3 digit number (like 911, such as 611, etc.) for the Lifeline. The 3 digit number to be studied would be intended to assist persons with mental health and/or suicidal crises in the United States. The feasibility and impact study here will explore potential infrastructure needs to support such a service, resources needed to enhance its effectiveness, and the overall cost/benefits of such a service to public health and safety interests. The Act authorizes that the VA and SAMHSA independently collect data and information pertinent to the study over the next 6 months. In turn, each of these federal entities will file a report to the FCC in (or before) mid-February of 2019, and the FCC will continue to investigate the impact of such a service on communications systems and wireless carriers, as well as what 3 digit number should be recommended. On or before August 14^th of 2019, the FCC will file a report to Congress, yielding recommendations compiled by SAMHSA, the VA and the FCC, for further actions. There are no appropriations tied to the current legislation.

Although this current legislation makes no promises for the Lifeline or our field, it still could be the most groundbreaking suicide prevention legislation for our country in years, perhaps having implications for the future at least as great as the Garret Lee Smith and Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Acts did when they became laws over a decade ago.  Just as those laws enjoyed unanimous bipartisan support, this Act has seen nearly the same level of agreement across party lines. Surely a factor in avoiding friction between parties was that this was an unfunded “study.” Nevertheless, many of the Bill’s co-sponsors in the Halls of Congress acknowledged the importance of suicide prevention and the need to promote access via an “easy-to-remember” number. In any case, the study assures that suicide prevention and the need to provide adequate support and access to national, state and local crisis care systems—in ways that are both efficient and effective—will be a part of conversations in Congress in ways that we haven’t seen in years (if ever). 

Some of you may remember a time when there was no 911, and callers experiencing immediate threats to their health or safety desperately dialed “0,”  imploring the operator to “connect me with the police” or “an ambulance!” Now begins a national conversation that could lead to a 3-digit number for mental health and suicidal crises that could one day be as ubiquitous in our grandchildren’s minds as 911 is to our urban, suburban, and rural communities today.   

I want to thank the vision of legislators from Utah and the tireless advocacy efforts of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention—among others—for helping this legislation to become a part of our changing national conversation about suicide prevention. Above all, I want to thank our national network of crisis centers and their heroic staffs and volunteers who have been answering the record-breaking volume of Lifeline calls over the past year (and many years).  The data and information that will be collected by the VA and SAMHSA over the coming six months will surely bear testament to the collective strength and sacrifices our networks have undertaken in service of people in crisis across this country, networks that have been collectively under-recognized and under-resourced for many years.

The Lifeline and our team at Vibrant Emotional Health in NYC look forward to working with SAMHSA, the VA and the FCC to gather the information needed for Congress to seriously consider future actions to enhance efficient and effective access to care for people in mental health and suicidal crises. These are interesting and important days for the field of crisis care and suicide prevention, indeed.

The Tompkins County Legislature on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution to support the Zero Suicide Model, calling on local healthcare and behavioral healthcare providers to follow the model’s systematic clinical approach to preventing suicides.

Tompkins County Legislature July 17, 2018

“This is an initiative we can be proud of,” said Shawna Black, chair of the legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, who sponsored the resolution. “We are going to be one of the first counties in New York State to implement Zero Suicide.”

“We have a lot of work to do as a county to support those that struggle with mental health issues,” Black added. “However, the conversation will continue and our goal of zero suicides will set the standard for our community and it’s providers. As a community we realize the need for honest conversation about suicide prevention and the tools we must implement in order to save lives. I would like to thank the many providers that offer service on a daily basis and for their commitment to the zero suicide initiative.”

The legislative passage of Resolution 7950 came a month after the newly formed Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition voted overwhelmingly to recommend the Zero Suicide Model for healthcare providers as a countywide suicide prevention initiative.

Jay Carruthers, director of the New York State Office of Mental Health’s Suicide Prevention Office, commended the county’s efforts to implement Zero Suicide.

“The suicide prevention work done at the community level in Tompkins County over the last two to three years has been extraordinary,” Carruthers said in a statement to The Sophie Fund. “Creating community partnerships, raising awareness, decreasing stigma, forming a coalition, and most recently working to integrate suicide prevention in health and behavior healthcare services—the Zero Suicide Model—it’s a wonderful accomplishment.”

“In fact,” Carruthers added, “a big topic of conversation at Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Suicide Prevention Task Force this year has been how to support robust suicide prevention at the local level. No one approach is going to be enough to materially reduce the number of suicides. It takes community-level public health approaches, a commitment to deliver suicide safer healthcare, and the creation of a culture of data-informed programming. The partnership between Tompkins County and the state has been truly exemplary in moving in this direction.”

Sharon MacDougall, Tompkins County deputy commissioner of mental health services, said “the support from our community, the Tompkins County Health and Human Services Committee, and the Legislature is inspiring and incredibly meaningful to our behavioral health providers and clients. Tompkins County Mental Health Services is honored to collaborate with our partners to push forward a vision and commitment for Zero Suicide in our community.”

MacDougall noted that including Tompkins County Mental Health Services, a total of seven local healthcare providers have become “Zero Suicide Champions” by committing to implement the model: Cayuga Medical Center; Alcohol & Drug Council of Tompkins County; Suicide Prevention & Crisis Service; Cornell Health of Cornell University; Family & Children’s Service of Ithaca; and CAP Plan/Preferred.

David Shapiro, president and CEO of Family & Children’s Service, commented: “F&CS has for many years been at the forefront of suicide prevention in Tompkins County through the staff training, team support, and clinical supervision that have become hallmarks of our clinical program. F&CS is one of the founding members of the Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition. Along with committing to the Zero Suicide Model, F&CS is also committed to be a Zero Suicide Champion and will share what we learn with the broader community so that we can all be better prepared to help people who may be at risk to commit suicide. Our commitment to the Zero Suicide Model sets a lofty goal with an aspirational challenge.”

Kent Bullis, executive director of Cornell Health, commented to The Sophie Fund: “Cornell Health supports the Zero Suicide model, and is committed to completing the Zero Suicide Organizational Self-Study this summer and reporting out our experience to the Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition in the spring.”

In March, Cayuga Medical Center became the first major healthcare provider in Tompkins County to endorse the Zero Suicide initiative. “Cayuga Medical Center is committed to Zero Suicide and is currently studying what resources we need to implement,” David Evelyn, vice president for medical affairs, told The Sophie Fund. “We are pursuing the self-assessment.”

In comments to the Legislature prior to Tuesday’s vote, Scott MacLeod of The Sophie Fund said that “adopting the Zero Suicide Model is an important step in addressing the public health problem of suicide and the rising suicide rate.” The Sophie Fund sponsored The Watershed Declaration adopted exactly 15 months earlier in which local healthcare providers pledged to intensify suicide prevention efforts in Tompkins County. The Sophie Fund also co-hosted an expert briefing on the Zero Suicide Model last October at The Statler Hotel on the Cornell campus.

MacLeod thanked the Tompkins County Legislature and the Zero Suicide Champions for their support for the Zero Suicide Model. He also thanked and cited the valuable support provided by Jay Carruthers, director of the state Suicide Prevention Office; Associate Director Sigrid Pechenik; Garra Lloyd-Lester, associate director of the Suicide Prevention Center of New York State; and Michael Hogan, a former New York State mental health commissioner and a developer of the Zero Suicide Model.

The Tompkins County resolution reads in part:

WHEREAS, the Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition endorses the Zero Suicide model as a framework for organizational commitment to safer suicide care in health and behavioral health care systems, and

WHEREAS, suicides are preventable, now therefore be it

RESOLVED, on recommendation of the Health and Human Services Committee, That Tompkins County hereby signs onto the Zero Suicide model to reduce the number of people committing suicides, commit to sharing lessons learned with other counties to support a state-wide initiative and encourage all health and behavioral healthcare to participate in the Zero Suicide model…

Shawna Black (center), chair of the Health and Human Services Committee

The Zero Suicide Model, sometimes called the “Suicide Safer Care Model,” holds that suicides can be prevented by closing cracks in healthcare systems—that suicide deaths for individuals under care within health and behavioral health systems are preventable.

Specifically, this entails a systematic clinical approach in healthcare systems—training staff, screening for suicide ideation, utilizing evidence-based interventions, mandating continuous quality improvement, treating suicidality as a presenting problem—and not simply relying on the heroic efforts of crisis staff and individual clinicians.

As the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) puts it:

“The programmatic approach of Zero Suicide is based on the realization that suicidal individuals often fall through multiple cracks in a fragmented and sometimes distracted healthcare system, and on the premise that a systematic approach to quality improvement is necessary.”

The facts make a compelling case that healthcare settings must play a critical role in preventing suicide. A review of New York State data of 3,564 suicides in 2013–2014 identified that 25 percent of the individuals who took their own lives had been discharged from emergency departments or inpatient facilities within just seven days prior to their suicide deaths.

The data also indicates a strong need to better train clinicians in suicide screening, assessment, intervention, and follow-up. Of 1,585 mental health providers surveyed by the New York State Office of Mental Health in 2014, 64 percent reported little or no specialized training in suicide-specific interventions. Moreover, about 33 percent reported that they did not feel they had sufficient training to assist suicidal patients.

Zero Suicide is at the heart of the 2012 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, released by the U.S. Surgeon General and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. The NSSP’s Goal 8 is to “promote suicide prevention as a core component of healthcare services.” Goal 9 is to “promote and implement effective clinical and professional practices for assessing and treating those at risk for suicidal behaviors.”

Zero Suicide is explicitly embraced by the NYS Suicide Prevention Plan 2016–17, entitled 1,700 Too Many. Implementing Zero Suicide in health and behavioral healthcare settings is the first pillar of the suicide prevention strategy outlined in the plan. The second pillar is to “create and strengthen suicide safer communities.”

The Zero Suicide Model builds on breakthroughs such as the Perfect Depression Care Initiative implemented in 2001 by the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan. Its comprehensive approach to mental and behavioral healthcare—incorporating suicide prevention as an explicit goal—demonstrated a 75 percent reduction in the suicide rate among Henry Ford health plan members.