Lights in the Darkness and the Symbol of our Star

Just weeks after my brother died in 2004, our family and his friends from across his lifespan started holding conference calls as we brainstormed our vision for the Carson J Spencer Foundation. The calls were as therapeutic as they were productive. While all of those participating loved him, not all of the friends knew each other at the beginning of our planning since they were acquainted with my brother at difference ages and places in his life. As we shared stories and ideas, we came together in our grief and our shared mission.


One of the early tasks of the group was to come up with a logo for the organization. Because Carson was such a prominent business man in Denver, the Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver’s main papers, interviewed several family members for a featured obituary following his death. The article closed with a quote from Carson’s mother-in-law, “he was a star who shone so brightly that he just burned out too quickly."

[Photo courtesy of BM01 via Flickr]

Indeed, my brother was a star in many ways. A shooting star who rose quickly as an entrepreneur in his industry and gained the admiration of many. He also had the ability to light up any room with his charming smile and pee-in-your-pants humor. His spirit was brilliant. And when stars die, their light shines on in the darkness.

One Yale professor once speculated, “…starlight, traveling in space forever, could be interpreted as an expression of immortality….long after stars have ‘died,’ photons of their energy – i.e., their light – continue to exist….It has been said that humans are made of the same stuff as stars – and we share the same energies.” --Schwartz, Garry (2002). The Afterlife Experiments. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

We wanted the Carson J Spencer Foundation to be the light of his legacy, carrying on his goodness and his spirit. Carson’s expressed legacy before he died was to help young emerging entrepreneurs get to college, so we started the Rising Star Scholarship to honor that wish. As we also acknowledged his gift of helping others and our desire to prevent what happened to him from happening to others, we began a number of programs in a social entrepreneurial spirit that are designed to prevent suicide, promote mental health, and assist those bereaved in our community. His light shines on.

The idea of stars in the dark is also the message we are trying to extend to those suffering in silence. Many have told me that being depressed feels like being trapped in a dark place with no way out. Loving, caring people can provide those inspiring points of light in the dark by offering connection and support as they hold the hope for the hopeless. Sometimes, those who are suffering can’t feel the warmth of the glow of these supporters initially, but they can be reassured by their presence and the realization that others care.

For these reasons, we have called our annual gala “Shining Lights of Hope” and we aim to recognize those individuals and organizations in our community who support the work of suicide prevention and provide compassionate assistance to those in pain. Each year we award those who have stood above the others as stars. The “Shining Lights of Hope” award goes to an individual or group that has been bereaved by suicide or who has experienced a mental health crisis and has turned that suffering into a passion to make a difference. The “Shooting Star” award goes to a organization that has selflessly gone out of their way to help our cause. Our “Volunteer of the Year” award celebrates the volunteer who has contributed significantly to moving us forward, and of course, our “Rising Star Scholar” is our chosen high school entrepreneur who receives our scholarship to help with four years of college tuition.

It’s been five years since Carson’s death, and many of us still feel the pain of his loss on a daily basis. We are comforted in part, knowing that we are living in the light of his legacy and that we are bringing forward a galaxy of stars who shine their light in the darkness for others.

…and lights shine on.

Working Minds Contest -- Celebrating Mentally Healthy Workplaces in Colorado

With so much focus on toxic workplaces and the stress of the economy on the employee, the Carson J Spencer Foundation decided to do something a little bit different: focus on the workplaces that are getting it right. While we know many workplaces are suffering under intense pressure resulting in bullying, depression, and dissatisfaction among the ranks, other workplaces have found ways to not only survive this rough spot, but to help their staff thrive. In recognition of this, the Carson J Spencer Foundation is hosting a contest to acknowledge mentally healthy workplaces, application due date is July 22, 2010.

Criteria:

• Must be a Colorado workplace (nonprofit, for-profit or governmental)
• Innovative and effective approaches that promote mental health at work
• New and creative methods
• Positive outcomes

Contest Guidelines: Submit 500-word essay that answers the question: How is mental health promoted at your workplace? What do you do and how do you know that the strategies are effective (case studies and statistics are both welcome as evidence)? Consider the following questions:

• How do you educate your workforce about mental health as part of overall wellness?
• What are the practices and policies that minimize distress at work?
• How does the workplace support those who are experiencing mental illness, trauma or bereavement?
• How does the workplace promotes a sense of purpose and belonging?

Awards:
First, second and third place awards given. Recognition at our Shining Lights of Hope Benefit Auction Evening on August 28th at LeMay Auto Museum. Awards include: complementary seats at our event, one year membership to the Working Mind Network, a free Working Minds Toolkit and training, and recognition as a "mentally healthy workplace" in local media outlets and on the Working Minds website.

Applications:
Applications should be sent electronically to Sally Spencer-Thomas: Sally@CarsonJSpencer.org. For more information or to get an application call 720-244-6535.









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Working Minds: Gaining Momentum for Suicide Prevention in the Workplace

“The workplace is the last crucible of sustained human contact for many of the 30,000 people who kill themselves each year in the U.S. A co-worker’s suicide has a deep, disturbing impact on work mates. For managers, such tragedies pose challenges no one covered in management school.”

Shellenbarger – Wall Street Journal

In the suicide prevention field a gap exists: the majority of people who die by suicide are men of working age, and yet very little prevention work is targeting this demographic. While 85% of middle managers believe part of their responsibility is to identify and help employees with depression, only 18% of those managers had received training that would prepare them to do so. Since we noticed this gap, the Carson J Spencer Foundation has been on a mission, and in 2010 our vision is quickly gaining momentum.

When we formed the Carson J Spencer Foundation in 2005, our goals were two-fold, to honor the life of the man who was the foundation’s namesake and to help prevent others from going through the unimaginable mental anguish he faced as he battled a mental illness that ultimately proved fatal. When we spent 18 months or so examining the needs of the field and our unique position to fulfill them, we discovered a much-needed niche to be filled: suicide prevention in the workplace. We then spent the next couple of years developing the “Working Minds” program – a multifaceted suicide prevention program for employers. And now, as we face our 5th year anniversary, the program is gaining momentum at every turn.

The goals of the Working Minds program are three-fold:

1. to increase awareness that suicide is a public health issue that is preventable and that workplaces have a responsibility to respond and a vested interest in prevention and mental health promotion
2. to increase skills related to suicide prevention, intervention and postvention in the workplace
3. to offer models of recovery at the individual level and mental health promotion at the organizational level

The program components include an interactive website (www.WorkingMinds.org), a toolkit for managers, and a network of organizations that are focused on promoting mental health at work. The Working Minds Toolkit, a cornerstone of the program, offers employers an off-the-shelf curriculum to begin to change the conversation workplaces are having about mental health and suicide. The toolkit, published in November 2009, is available on Amazon and through the Working Minds website.

In 2010, we continue to see the momentum for the Working Minds Program build:

• The Anschutz Family Foundation funds the Working Minds Program implementation among organizations that serve homeless populations.
• Mountain States Employer’s Council, the go-to organization for HR training in the Rocky Mountain Region, agrees to offer Working Minds training to its members
• The Working Minds Toolkit is accepted to the Best Practice Registry after being reviewed by national experts who determine that it adheres to standards of care
• Presentations are made at the Navy’s Suicide Prevention Conference and other national and regional conferences touching leaders in the military, risk management and suicide prevention fields.

With the increasing strain of economic hardship and the challenges of reintegrating returning military from active combat into a civilian workforce, mental health concerns will continue to confront employers in many ways. The Working Minds Toolkit helps give them skills to proactively address these problems rather than just react to them.

How is your company promoting mental health and preventing suicide?

How to Organize an Inspiring, Engaging and Informative Suicide Awareness and Prevention Week

The poet Robert Ingersoll once said,

“In the night of death, hope sees a star. And listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”

How can we create hope on our campuses, when many students are suffering in silence?

Many campuses conduct a number of awareness weeks during the year, and as the mental health concerns at our colleges and university increase, many more are participating in the National Suicide Awareness and Prevention Week. Nationally this week is recognized during the second week in September while World Suicide Prevention Day is September 10th -- but really, this week can be scheduled at any time that works for your campus.

...and the time to start planning is now!

Awareness weeks are great for creating energy and for sharing information, but if you never do anything else for suicide prevention all year, you will not create significant and lasting change on your campus. Think about your Suicide Awareness and Prevention Week as a tool to gain momentum to help implement other strategies that will offer a comprehensive approach. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center offers a model that can help you figure out where to start.

[MODEL adapted from SPRC/JED Comprehensive Approach to Suicide Prevention]

In the following 15-minute podcast, I offer the: who, what, when, where, why, how and how much suggestions on how to organize an inspiring, engaging and informative Suicide Awareness and Prevention Week.

PODCAST

What have you done on your campus for Suicide Awareness and Prevention Week? Please share your successful programs.

The Daddy Whisperers: Why Dads Need their Kids

The Daddy Whisperers: Why Dads Need their Kids


“Michael” hunched over his paper – partly showing me his responses and partly hiding them. I could see the words “crying, mad, sad” scribbled on the lines where he should’ve been writing the reasons why he loved his Dad. This second grader was participating in a new project called The Daddy Whisperers developed by the Carson J Spencer Foundation (CJSF). The mission of the project is to help protect fathers from feeling isolation and distress by strengthening the bond they have with their kids.

One of the things I learned through my research with men who had been suicidal, but who are now doing well, is the protective power of the fathers’ relationship with their children. Some of these men credited their children for “saving their lives” – whether it was the responsibility Dads felt for their kids or the concern they had about the legacy they would leave should they die by suicide, children factored into the Dads’ decision making process. Because of this, the CJSF staff spent a full day at a local elementary school, working with preschoolers to sixth graders and helping them communicate why they felt their Dad (or other father figure) was special.

We set out to create a Father’s Day project to bolster this bond. Because Mother’s Day falls within the school year, Mothers often receive special school-supported projects that honor motherhood, but fathers, whose special day falls in June, often do not. We adapted the model of PostSecret, a hugely successful viral on-line network where people share their secrets by communicating them in the form of an artistic postcard. For our project, we asked kids to share with us the secret reasons they love their Dads – things they think are really special about their Dad that maybe their Dad doesn’t know about.

So, I asked Michael why he was writing the words “crying, mad, sad” on his Daddy Whisperers worksheet and he told me, “My parents are getting a divorce, and they are not getting along. I see yellow trucks everywhere, and I wonder if they are my Dad coming to see me.”

I told him, “Your parents might not be getting along, but you can still love your Dad. Why don’t you start by drawing a yellow truck?”

Fifteen minutes later he brought his postcard to me. On it was a yellow pick up with a smiling boy in the back. “Can you help me write the words?” he asked.

“You bet,” I said. “What is it you want to say to your Dad?”

“Please write, ‘I love my Dad because he lets me play with him, he is the Wolf Den leader, and I like hanging out with him a lot.’”

I wrote down his messages and patted him on the back, “Good work,” I said.

He nodded and walked away smiling and my heart swelled. I hope his Dad can cherish this too.

To follow additional discoveries from our Daddy Whisperers Project, please follow: http://thedaddywhisperers.blogspot.com/

Bridging the Divide – Suicide Awareness and Prevention Summit

What is it about the Mountain and Desert regions of the U.S.? Why do our states consistently trade off for top-ten spots of states having the highest suicide rates in the country (minus Alaska)? How can it be that in such beautiful, majestic country, so many people are fighting with such strong urges to die?

About 200 people came together this past week to try to figure it out at the 3rd Annual Bridging the Divide Suicide Awareness and Prevention Summit. Colorado State University hosted this event featuring a diverse selection of five plenary sessions and 18 breakout workshops – topics ranged from:

• the Myths about Suicide (Thomas Joiner) to

• how pets provide grief support (Linn-Gust) to

• strategies to dovetail fall prevention for older adults with suicide prevention (Guard).

Formats varied from Nancy Rappaport’s dramatic reading of her memoir “In Her Wake” to a panel of five people who turned their tragic struggle with the impact of suicide into passionate advocacy.

As this conference grows in scope and depth, there is evidence that we are changing the course of the devastating trend of suicide loss in our part of the country. As I mentioned in my remarks during the event, we are moving toward a tipping point of change. Change doesn’t happen in a steady fashion; rather it builds slowly and then shifts in an instant. Eco psychologist Joanna Macy equated the change to water becoming ice: “Before the water turns to ice, it looks just the same as before. Then a few crystals form, and suddenly the whole system undergoes cataclysmic change.”

From Net Efekt

Can you feel the crystals forming?

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What do you think will help us change the high rates of suicide in our Western regions?

Suicide Prevention in Colorado – Together We Are Better

When suicide makes the news, many of us cringe because the coverage – often sensationalized and overly simplistic – can increase the risk that vulnerable people may act on suicidal thoughts as a result.

Today was different.

Today was a milestone day for the suicide prevention movement in Colorado – our story made the front page of the Denver Post’s Sunday edition, complete with pictures and graphs that demonstrated both the deep need in our state and the exceptional efforts being made to save lives.

Like many of the Rocky Mountain states, Colorado’s suicide rate continues to be high despite the dedicated efforts of many suicide prevention organizations. Kevin Simpson, the Denver Post reporter, spent more than a month collecting information for this article. In this article he highlights the fact that while many are fighting this war against suicide, our resources are continually stripped, making this challenging work even more difficult. By interviewing so many of us who consider ourselves foot soldiers in this battle, he did another important thing – he helped to show how our field is becoming united in our efforts.

As competition for scarce resources increases the risk for internal conflict, suicide prevention groups in Colorado are finding creative ways to collaborate because we know that “together we are better.”

In many ways, Colorado is seen as a leading state in the effort of suicide prevention. Thanks to pioneers like Deanna Rice and others who testified before the state legislature in the 1990s and helped create our Office of Suicide Prevention, we became one of the first states to have an official state strategy for suicide prevention. Other pioneers like LaRita Archibald (founder of HEARTBEAT support groups) and Vivian Epstein (founder of Parents Surviving Suicide) started support groups for families bereaved by suicide long before most people realized the unique challenges of suicide grief. Hotline support has evolved through the steadfast dedication of Eleanor Hamm and others out of our crisis center for decades. And of course, there is the far-reaching work of the Emme family and the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program, whose message lets youth know that “it’s okay to ask for help.”

More recently, we have seen the explosion of the incredibly effective work of Jeff Lamontagne and The Second Wind Fund, who are helping uninsured and underinsured youth at-risk for suicide link to qualified help. Sheila Linwood in Mesa County, Ronna Autrey in Routt County, Dana Lindsay in Larimer County, Nancy Harris in Otero County, Susan Marine in Boulder County and many more – are all finding ways to learn from each other to save lives in Colorado.

"Long's Peak from North, Rocky Mountain National Park," Colorado.

From: U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 79-AA-M16

Photographer: Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984

The reorganization of the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado is another piece of evidence of our pulling together. Knowing that our rural communities need as much (perhaps even more) support than the Denver metro efforts, we now use audio and video conferencing technology to engage communities statewide. When we have better knowledge of the strengths of each organization we are much less likely to duplicate efforts.

The 3rd annual Bridging the Divide Suicide Awareness and Prevention Summit (May 20 & 21, 2010 at Colorado State University) is still another example of successful collaboration. For this conference, clinicians, researchers, advocates and those impacted by suicide share knowledge and resources.

The impact of suicide often remains hidden to the world. The fact that we have such few resources to deal with this profound public health tragedy is a moral outrage. Kevin’s article helped shed some light on the deep need in our state and the potential for a different future.

Help those in a position of creating change pay attention – spread the word.

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Please take a moment to thank Kevin for his coverage by writing him a note: ksimpson@denverpost.com

To join the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado – CLICK HERE

To register for the “Bridging the Divide Suicide Prevention Summit” – CLICK HERE