Community Education
Each year, Community Education volunteers present hundreds of Stress Management and Suicide Prevention workshops to thousands of high school students in the Lower Mainland and Sea to Sky corridor.
Our Choices2: Reaching Out Film and Workshop package is a school-based youth suicide prevention program that began in 1986 in response to the suicide of a local youth. Our workshops present information and model skills that will support high school students to reach out to get help for themselves and for each other when they are experiencing varying degrees of distress.
Current research indicates that 7% of BC high school students reported making a suicide attempt in the past twelve months; 14% reported making a suicide plan; and 16% reported seriously contemplating suicide. We also know that between 2003 and 2007, 81 BC youth took their own lives.
While these statistics are staggering, in our school program we take hope from, and are responding to, research that indicates:
- Most youth suicides are preventable;
- 70 to 80% of people who kill themselves signal their suicidal intentions to others;
- Youth are much more likely to share their suicidal intentions to each other than to any of the adults in their lives; and
- Talking about suicide is actually a preventive measure.
The Crisis Centre’s Professional Development program also offers suicide risk assessment and safety planning seminars to school counsellors and other front line mental health professionals.
To learn more about our Choices2: Reaching Out school program, or to book a school workshop, please contact tyoung@crisiscentre.bc.ca .
To learn more about becoming a volunteer classroom educator, go to our Community Education volunteer page.