District 5810 Grant funding enabled the Suicide Prevention and Brain Health Rotary eClub to provide ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) to more than 20 attendees on June 24-25 in Mesquite.
ASIST is an evidence based two-day face to face workshop that uses audiovisuals, discussions and simulations or “role play situations” to teach attendees to prevent suicide and save lives by learning to recognize warning signs and how to reach out to the person experiencing these warning signs.
It teaches how to listen non-judgmentally, to encourage the person in distress to determine what is important to them, to provide skilled interventions and to help develop a safety plan to keep someone alive. In post training evaluations, all participants agreed or strongly agreed that, after this training, they were confident they could help a person at risk of suicide and they would be able to do a suicide intervention.
All attendees responded that they would recommend this training to others. More than 1.2 million people in the US attempt suicide each year with more than 45,000 dying by suicide. This District Grant funding has made it possible to equip attendees to literally save lives.