STUDY/ACTION PROJECT ON SUICIDE

 

            “Each time the clock ticks forward one minute, somewhere in the United States someone has tried to end his or her life.  About 80 times each day these attempts succeed, accounting for about 30,000 suicides per year.  Approximately 5,000 of these are youth suicides, or bringing it closer to home, on the average about 100 adolescents in your state will successfully commit suicide this year.”  (Margaret Thaler Singer, Forecast magazine, January 1980)

 

            The conditions described above suggest a need for: (1) more knowledge and understanding of the circumstances that cause people to enter into self-destructive behavior and how to prevent it, and (2) knowledge and understanding of how to better care for the “survivors”, those left behind after a person has died by suicide including family, friends, and others touched directly or indirectly by this person’s death.  Most communities have agencies working on the former; very few have any intentional work related to the latter.

 

Goals of this Project

 

1.   To contribute to greater knowledge and understanding of suicide and to more open discussion of it as a reality of our culture.

 

2.   To increase our ability to discern self-destructive attitudes and behavior in ourselves and others and to better know how to deal with them.

 

3.   To gain knowledge and understanding of professional resources available and how to use them affectively.

 

4.   To contribute to better care for suicidal persons and for those who are left behind after suicide.

 

Implementation

 

1.   LSM-Twin Cities will collect materials and form a bibliography for LSM that will be enlarged as more resources come to our attention.

 

2.   To develop guidelines in the form of a packet for local implementation of the project.

 

3.   To make available the packets for purchase so that they can be used as a catalyst for the development of local study and action.

 

Time Frame

 

1.   11th Annual Assembly-presentation of proposal.

 

2.   Dec. 1, 1980-original draft of guideline packet to Chicago for review and printing.

 

3.   Christmas 1980 (tentative)-packets available to local groups for implementation.

 

4.   12th Annual Assembly-presentation of review of project by LSM-TC.

 

Cost

 

            $400 for xeroxing, mailing, and some purchase of copyrighted materials.

 

Responsibility

 

LSM-TC, 1407 N. Cleveland, St. Paul, MN 55108     Telephone: (612) 645-4561

Elisa Bromhal, Jeff Carnes Michael Girlinghouse, Verlyn Smith - contributors