Description

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Every year it is estimated that in excess of 100,000 people in the United States end their lives by suicide. These people are not just statistical numbers, They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, friends, and/or classmates.

Answering the Cry for Help will help to bridge the gap between schools and communities by providing guidelines for developing a Community Suicide Prevention Program that:

• promotes awareness about risks,
• discusses methods for suicide prevention,
• establishes guidelines and resources for intervention,
• seeks to educate and train Crisis Team members and community leaders to manage possible situations and scenarios.

This resource manual provides ideas for dealing with funding issues, guidelines for media relations, an outline for beginning a proactive preventative outreach program, and websites that will prove to be invaluable as you create your own Community-based Suicide Prevention program.

About the Author

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David Opalewski, M.A. is the founder and president of Grief Recovery, Inc., in Saginaw, Michigan. He is an author, consultant, and a widely sought-after conference speaker and trainer for the tragedy component of school crisis teams across the country.David has a forty-four-year career in education. He has taught at the elementary, middle, high school, and college levels and was an at-risk counselor for eight of those years. During Opalewski's educational career, he experienced the combined deaths of twenty-six students and fellow staff members. He was a replacement teacher in a fifth-grade classroom for a teacher who was killed in an auto accident during the middle of the school year.He retired from Central Michigan University in May of 2017 as Professor Emeritus. David worked part time for three years in a funeral home as an aftercare consultant to the families of the deceased.