St. Peter’s Anglican Church invites members of the community to learn about suicide and prevention methods.
From Oct. 24 to 25 at St. Peter’s three, half-day information workshops will be held focusing on suicide identification and more importantly prevention.
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Keith Dobyns, the recently retired minister of St. Peter’s said that he is tidying up a few ongoing projects such as the SafeTALK Workshop before he fully retires. As a suicide prevention session, Dobyns feels that it is particularly important and relevant to everyone within the community.
“Suicide has touched the lives of so many people and despite that, it’s very difficult for some people to actually ask the questions: Are you at risk of hurting yourself? Have you thought of suicide?” Dobyns said. “So we want to give people in a very short, engaging half-day workshop skills to feel confident asking those questions.”
More important than asking these questions, to Dobyns, is what you do afterwards to help suicidal people through a rough time. To that end, the workshop will also be focusing on how to identify what’s an appropriate response and treatment for someone who admits they need help.
Dobyns said there are a lot of resources in town to refer people to, depending on people’s personalities and individual needs, which the workshop covers over the course of the session. Each of the three workshops covers the same material and have been staggered time wise to accommodate as many community members’ schedules as possible.
The “pretty lively program” is entirely funded, by the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, meaning there are no fees for signing up to attends any of the three times. Interested parties can call or email the church to sign up, with 30 slots open per session. Kathy Provost of the Canadian Mental Health Association out of 100 Mile House will be running each workshop, bringing real-world experience to the table.
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Sessions run in the afternoon on Wednesday and in the morning and evening on Thursday and Friday, to give Provost breathing room, according to Dobyns. Appropriate ages for the event are 16 to 100 he said.
“People who are at risk for suicide don’t want to die. They want help, they want somebody, in almost all cases. They will reach out and so all we really need to do is tune our ears to that ask and give them the resources so that they don’t have to go down a path they really don’t want to,” Dobyns concluded.
Sessions occur on Wednesday, Oct. 24 from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. or Thursday, Oct. 25 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Registration can be done by phone at 250-392-4246 or e-mail at wlchurch@telus.net.
patrick.davies@wltribune.com
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