After a spike in foreclosures around 2007, the city of Hillsdale witnessed an increase in suicides that the community now seeks to reduce through the new Hillsdale Suicide Prevention Coalition.
According to County Commissioner Ruth Brown, Hillsdale needs the group due to a “very bad suicide rate.”
“We never had a really bad history of suicides until 2007 — maybe 2009,” Brown said. “Hillsdale had a spike in foreclosures, and hundreds lost their houses. With that spike in foreclosures, then we spiked in suicide.”
Hillsdale College Director of Health Services Brock Lutz and 10 others attended the first meeting at House of Refuge Church on Monday, a gathering Brown was instrumental in organizing.
“When a member of our community commits suicide, the whole community is impacted,” Lutz said in an email.
The group plans to start a monthly support group for suicide survivors and parents of those who have committed suicide. According to Brown, the coalition’s purpose is to make Hillsdale a Prevention Prepared Community, or PPC.
“If a person is all the way to the point of, ‘I’m going to kill myself today,’ they’ve probably gone beyond help, because they’re in a crisis,” Brown said. “What you want to do is try to help people as much as possible before they get to that crisis point.”
In order to accomplish the group’s goal of making Hillsdale a PPC, the members need training. Currently, the group is working with LifeWays Community Mental Health Center to foster interest in setting up a training session in April. In an 8-hour class, participants would learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of people who might be contemplating suicide and how to help them. Right now, only one person is seriously interested, so more people would have to join in order to set up a class.
“We’re trying to find more people, maybe 15 or 20,” Brown said. She added that the coalition is currently looking for grant money to help reduce the prohibitive $50 cost of the class for individuals.
Lutz added that the health of the community impacts the health of the college.
“I decided to go [to the meeting] because of interest in addressing suicide in our community and the need for the college to be represented because we are also a part of this community,” he said.
“I think this coalition could serve the community well by increasing knowledge of resources for people struggling with mental illness, decreasing the stigma of struggling with mental illness, and supporting their family members,” Lutz said.
