Suicide prevention workshop launches in Nunavik
Groups can take half-day training on how to recognize and respond to people in need
The Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services, whose Kuujjuaq office is seen here, launched the Reach Out workshop on suicide prevention on Feb. 3. (Photo by Elaine Anselmi)
As part of Suicide Prevention Week, Nunavik’s health board is launching a series of workshops on suicide prevention across the region.
“We are quite proud of the official launch of the Reach Out workshop. It is developed by Inuit for Inuit; it exemplifies the importance for solutions to come from our own communities,” said Minnie Grey, executive director of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services, in a Feb. 3 news release.
“In suicide prevention, each person can play a role, and with the Reach Out workshop, we provide Nunavimmiut with tools to strengthen the social fabric.”
The Reach Out workshop is designed to help participants be aware of suicide risks and support people who may be thinking about killing themselves.
“The objective is to help Nunavimmiut recognize the signs of distress more readily, speak openly about suicide, listen attentively and refer people at risk to the available resources,” according to the news release.
The workshop lasts for a half-day and is facilitated in both English and Inuktitut by suicide prevention liaison workers.
While the official launch of the workshop was this week, it has been provided already over the past month to a few groups including Canadian Rangers, Pivallianiq agents with the housing board, and the board of directors of the health board, said Josee Levesque, a communications officer for the board.
The Reach Out workshops are available to groups, such as teachers, community workers or housing staff, in any community of Nunavik. Anyone wanting to play a role in prevention can make a request for a workshop to be hosted in their community.
Requests have already been made for the workshop, Levesque said, and they’re currently working on preparing a calendar for the year.
With only four suicide prevention liaison workers, and 14 communities under their purview, Nunavik’s health board can hold two or three workshops per month, Levesque said. The workshops will be held all through the year.
Depending on the number of requests, Levesque said, they would consider whether more trainers might be needed.
Nunavut will also be using the workshop model in its own suicide prevention efforts.
For more information, you can contact the following suicide prevention liaison workers or email: training.pp@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
Hudson Coast
Martha Inukpuk 819-254-8793 suicide.prevention.liaison.worker.inukjuak@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
Maggie Saviadjuk 819-255-8175, extension 214 suicide.prevention.liaison.worker.salluit@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
Ungava Coast
Valerie Lock 819-964-2905, extension 231 valerie.lock@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
Levina Kritik 819-633-5444 levina.kritik.cstu@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
If you or someone you know is in distress and needs help, you can also reach the following resources:
- Nunavut Kamatsiaqtut Help Line: 1-800-265-3333 (Inuktitut/English)
- Department of Inuit Values and Practices, NRBHSS (9 to 5): 1 877-686-2845 (Inuktitut/English)
- First Nations and Inuit Hope for Wellness Help Line: 1-855-242-3310 (English/French)
- Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868 www.kidshelpphone.ca (English/French)
I wonder if front line suicide prevention workers do even go face suicidal person, do they even get a call the local Nursing or Hospitals when Nursing or Hospital(s) receives suicidal youth or any age being brought by Police, or medivac to bigger Hospital(s)?
Unless, front line workers are just sitting around waiting something to happen?
We’ll go see the Hospital in Kuujjuaq, go visit department(s) check how many are now admitted, what can you do about it?
We’ll do they even know, when a suicidal person is experiences numbness really in pain, cannot notice anything but really feeling the pain in their head(s) doesn’t want to be disturbed etc?
Many facing girlfriend/boyfriend problems cannot accept the reality of breaking up relationships, being bullied, being laughed at, calling names without their proper names, calling nick names that are not even in the birth certificate etc.! Making a person to belittling.
Wife/Husband, Girlfriend/Boyfriend drinking problems etc!
Ouch it hurts, because I was once in it before.
Would like to see training being offered as a class in school to all children. How to listen to your friend / offer advice / counsel. Peer to peer counseling can look like, ” I don’t know how to help you, but I know an adult that I trust. Let’s talk to them.” It can also sound like, “I don’t think that I am in the best place to help you right now, but I can find someone who can.” Eliminate the stigma of talking about depression, events that have traumatized youth / adults and listen compassionately.
Great idea. Teaching young children coping mechanisms and providing this in the high schools would be most beneficial to those in need and those in a support position. I learned today that 60% of the Nunavut population are under 25. It is critical that this demographic have mental health services available to them and to be heard.
I’m concerned about the waste of resources that go into these workshops. Wasted in the sense that it could be used to do suicide prevention properly. I’ve been in many of these workshops over the years. What I find is it’s not really doing a lot of good towards the goal of preventing suicide. It’s not reaching the ones who need it. In these workshops you have grieving people to sit around in circles, play games, write down things on papers, and cry about their pain of lost. I mean thats good that people can sit around and talk and cry about love ones that had taken their lives. But it’s not suicide prevention, in the general sense to help the population in need. It’s actual a grieving group that needs healing. I’m all in support of those that need healing, but let’s not call it suicide prevention workshop, it’s not.
The ones I’ve gone to were just sit around and tell your story. A chance to bring up the past, and cry again. I thought it was going to be educational and informative about what we as first line workers can do, but it was not like that. In the workshop, most people were there because family members and friends have died from suicide. It had me lost for why it was called a workshop. It was indeed a support group meeting, allowing people to voice and grieve.
Many don’t want to face the past, and move on, it is too painful for them to face the past, once you are hurt, you are hurt for life, from blunt to sharp pain.
That’s the problem here, mixing up the ones that need healing, with the concept of suicide prevention. There needs to be a specific healing group for that, and one for the mandated suicide prevention workshop, in a separate forum. It’s two different things. Anyway , you can’t help anyone , if you don’t help yourself first, and suicide prevention workshops are suppose to be informative and educational. I’m concerned that it will not complete its goal.
Nobody can prevent suicide. All the workshops, meetings and talk is like waste of fresh air; so stop patting yourselves on the back. And the people who take the workshops don’t work in frontline services, so it’s like flushing all the $$$$ one way or another.
And all the participants who go to Dialogue For Life in Montreal each year are lucky enough to be going to those vacations or Christmas shopping trips.
Too little too late, always!
Why don’t the organizers of these workshops make real effort towards suicide prevention? Why not teach and preach about how to love your family and yourself? Why not teach about sexual and other abuses of children, and how it destroys the soul of little children, thereby giving them hopelessness in a future? Why not teach about the negative effects of drugs and alcohol, and how it too destroys? Teach people about what happens when your child is taken away by social services, and will forever be damaged with mental health issues. Let’s stop this worthless gatherings, spending money for nothing, and give out a false sense of accomplishment.
Hum. I wonder how this group to say help a non Inuit living in the community? Developed by Inuit for Inuit. Think god our doctors, nurses, specialists and other professionals are far more worldly in prevention. Designed by kind people to help all people. And designed by professionals, not just anyone injecting their narrow views.
Some Reasons for suicide? Sexual abuse; physical and psychological abuse; neglected and rejection; bullied. Jealousy, a big one. Mental illness, and maybe all are mentally ill at the time of suicide. Loneness; poor coping skills. These are just some reasons. If these reasons alone were addressed at these workshops, it would be a major step. And let’s say that residential school trauma is there also. Let’s teach people that even if you were abused yourself, you have no right to abuse others. It’s a choice.
Some right but not all right either…
There are many reasons a youth can be suicidal, you think you know their path, girlfriend/boyfriend possess, being cheated on breaks their heart, go learn a youth having life issues, it can always be any age too.
early drinking age, drugging then relationship problems comes after, I wish you can learn their state, Facebook social media is involved too etc.
Are you God? I think that the comment was close to god, according to what was said and the fact that your confirmed it. The reasons for suicides are the same for you, as it is for the comment above yours.
Girlfriend/boyfriend possess, being cheated on breaks their heart, early drinking age, drugging then relationship problems come after. That’s all aspects of poor coping skills. Being suicidal because of jealousy. Very possessive. Thinking they own another person. Breaking up in a relationship, is the end of the world. My girlfriend look at another guy, so I’m going to kill myself. That’s the kind of things we are seeing as the reasons for suicide. It’s lack of coping skills. Young people need workshops to teach them that jealousy and trying to own another person is wrong. Teach them that you are a person fully without the unhealthy attachment to your boyfriend or girlfriend. Teach the uniqueness of being human and a fully capable person. Many aspects of life in Nunavik is focussed of group and herd power. That’s find to a certain point. But to be totally dependent on your group, and to function unhealthy without them is a condition that needs attention to fix. No one goes and does things without this big herd around them. Their individuality fails to develop. Even hunting, can’t be done without a large group. Now we all know the power of the group, it’s important, but to not be functional because you are not with the group needs to be looked at in Inuit society. It’s at the base of poor coping skills for the individual development.
There are some misconceptions about suicide out there, one particularly one important one I would like to point out. As with all illnesses and conditions in this world, suicide prevention has no magical answers, even from professionals working in the field. We can do everything possible to try and prevent suicide, but we never know for sure how successful it will remain, disappointed as we some times are, suicide happens even with the best of efforts for it to not happen. When someone shows up at the emergency room, all can be done is to put that person on suicide watch, and refer to psychological and psychiatrical council. The thing you have to remember, when it comes right down to it, everyone needs to take a certain responsibility for their life. No one really can force another person to love life. We can show you the way, but it’s you who must do it. If you break up with your partner, or you are using alcohol and drugs, or even if you are being abused, or was abused, you still must be a major player in wanting to live. Others want to help you! But it’s only so much others can do. I hope this is understood by those who think that it’s all up to someone else to prevent suicide, it’s mostly up to you. And when you do suicide, life really do go on without you! So why not be in life anyway.
How are you going to sit in a room and prevent suicide in this society? A society where kids are being abused, and taken away into foster homes. Where alcohol and drugs are more important than food on the table. Where drug dealers and bootleggers are getting away with depletion of the heart and soul of people, and it’s allowed by the municipal to continue. Where people are dying in large numbers from alcohol, called suicide instead. Where education is not only lacking, but encouraged, via cultural preferences and separation of main stream living. Thereby confusing kids into believing in hate and low self esteem. This society is a mess. It may have a future, but only if a good cleaning up is done. Tomorrow, next week, next month and next year, suicide will continue in the wake of this mess.