FEDERAL, STATE, AND PRIVATE ACTIVITIES

Alaska

Description:
The proposed suicide prevention initiative uses a multifaceted, community based design to decrease the number of Inupiat youth suicides and suicide attempts in the Northwest Arctic Borough. To engage the community and to create a meaningful prevention strategy, a suicide prevention taskforce made up of community members, health and social service professionals, and Inupiat youth will be developed to direct the initiative. The first year of the project will focus on community collaboration and learning. Youth will be recruited to participate in Story/Dialogue sessions focused on suicide prevention. Taskforce members will use data from these sessions coupled with evidence-based models to develop a suicide prevention strategy for the eleven Native communities in the region. Although specific risk and protective factors have yet to be identified and targeted by the taskforce, evidence shows that community-based suicide prevention initiatives should include both universal, selected and indicated strategies. In keeping with this model, the initiative's primary activities in the second year will include community outreach and awareness, youth suicide prevention education and youth development activities, ,gatekeeper and professional training, and the development of a crisis response team. These strategies will target the risk and protective factors that the taskforce identifies as important to their communities. With this in mind, the initiative's activities are intended to develop local leadership for addressing youth issues, initiate community dialogue about youth risk prevention and health promotion, and increase the communities' awareness of potential risk and protective factors for Inupiat youth suicide. Community awareness will increase the likelihood that a suicidal youth will be identified and referred to a mental health professional in time to save his or her life. The community-based approach will also affect the Inupiat community's beliefs, nonns, and rituals related to suicide. This could have a profound effect on youth behavior. Lastly, involvement in the taskforce will help professionals gain community trust, learn culturally consonant intervention strategies, and will support the development of a suicide crisis response team. The team will be available to villages throughout the region for suicide postvention. This, too, is a form of suicide prevention. Combined, the proposed suicide prevention initiative will engage all the community stakeholders in working together to decrease the incredibly high rates of suicide and suicide attempts in the region.