The SPC has been on the move and able to make big strides in outreach thanks to the funding received last year. As you know, we had an ad created and shared across both local movie theaters in NB. We have definitely seen an increase in calls to our crisis line, with about a 7% increase from this time last year.

 

In addition, we participated in Mental Health Mile Walks in both school districts, handing out stickers and crisis line information to students as they completed their mile walk. For the month of January, we hit all the local gyms and yoga studios and left information encouraging people to  “Check on your Strong Friends.” We were happy that so many of the local gyms embraced us, but we have some work to do with the larger gyms.  

 

During the National School Counselor’s Week we delivered over 100 (wow) goodie bags to each of our school counselors, acknowledging that they are on the frontlines of youth suicide prevention. The bags contained cookies and information about the suicide prevention resources in our county. We are also on the schedule to reach out to the more rural areas of our county by joining the CRRC in their Resource Fair.

 

We are excited for some future endeavors as well….we have reached out to partner with the Texas Suicide Prevention Collaborative in bringing the Texas Suicide Prevention Symposium to New Braunfels this June. 

 

With all that good news, as you know, we still have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, the first month of this year was difficult, with multiple suicides in our county. One unfortunate incident was on the front page of our local newspaper, even disclosing the young person’s name in the headline of the article. As a council, we feel called to educate our local media on responsible reporting and have since reached out to offer evidence-based information on reporting suicides in a trauma-informed manner. My hope is that with this education, those with such a large platform, can improve in their delivery of local news.

 

Thank you again for reaching out. Your dedication to this cause is encouraging and I look forward to continuing this work…together!