ASIST workshop teaches suicide prevention skills

Published June 8, 2007
By Corey Dahl
21st Space Wing Public Affairs

PETERSON AFB, Colo. -- One woman, distraught over her husband's death, contemplated taking morphine to end her pain.

Upset about the death of his dog - and only friend - an older man said he might overdose on pills.

And a servicemember, worried about a recent demotion, sat in a windowsill, ready to jump.

These situations, and more like them, played out at the Peterson chapel June 4 and 5, as a handful of servicemembers and base employees role-played to work on solving suicide crises they could encounter in the future.

Part of a two-day ASIST - Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training - workshop, the participants learned about warning signs associated with suicide as well as techniques for helping a potential victim.

Held four times a year on base, the workshop is geared toward supervisors and commanders, who often receive little or no training on suicide prevention, said Chaplain Darrell Clark, one of 3,000 administrators world-wide trained in ASIST.

"The training they get is minimal in this type of helping people," he said. "This helps them feel more comfortable with dealing with someone at risk, what to look for."

While suicide isn't a large problem in the military - rates in 2005 were about 11 per 100,000 people, about 40 percent lower than in the civilian sector - ASIST helps provide a more hands-on, personal look at suicide prevention that can help leaders when they do encounter someone who needs help, Chaplain Clark said.

He said he especially recommends the training for anyone deploying to Iraq, where servicemembers can experience unusual stressors and suicide prevention resources are scarce.

"They're going to be in Iraq where they're going to be with other (servicemembers) with all kinds of issues," he said. "If you're going to be working with subordinates, you need a lot of skills along this line. You need to be able to not just identify that they're suicidal but know how to help them."

Army Staff Sgt. Gabriel Cardenais, who works on Peterson, will be deploying in January and said the ASIST training will come in handy there as well as in everyday life once he returns.

"I am going to use this forever," he said. "It's given me a mindset that I'm going to use not just for my Soldiers but for my friends and my neighbors for the rest of my life."

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