MINUTES for 2019-05-28 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes May 28,2019 Page 3 Deputy Director Maurice Messina asked, what about these guys who never reach out? Nahakuelua: That's where friends or family can say, something's not right with this person. It's hard for a lot of them to go up to the person and says do you have thoughts of hurting yourself? We have to retrain ourselves or get word out there. Chair Doolittle: He had a therapist. A friend of mine reached out right when it happened, he said he had a therapist and that's the alarming part, even his therapist did not see any red flags. That's what's alarming, even a professional therapist... Sheridan: Sometimes when they're having problems and all of a sudden the clouds clear up, and they're fine, they've made the decision to kill themselves. Chair Doolittle: I've had three people that I was close to over the last 10 years who have committed suicide. I've passed through those dark places before where the thought is life would be better if I just weren't here. But that's about as far as that discussion goes. I find something worthwhile to get involved in. Nahakuelua: When assessing suicidality, and even homicidally, there's three stages, thoughts,plans, action. Many people are in the thoughts stage, they have thoughts of committing suicide. In training that is of concern but not enough to take action. But when they have a plan and the means to do it, then you have to alert people, the right authorities. I know it's best to talk person to person but I brought a phone number, you can pass it out, Crisis Line of Hawaii neighbor island 1-800-753-6879 and Oahu is 808- 832-3100. Then there's a state mental health eligibility screening for like Veterans who got a dishonorable discharge they can go through the state 808-643-2643. Wery: No matter how dark the night is, the sun always comes up in the morning. Roddy Sueoka: One of the hard parts, when I came out of the clinic side, one of the things we told our interns and graduate students, one of the reasons it's tough to talk about suicide and understand this subject is because you never met a person and was able to ask them after they committed suicide. Until we get that answer, because those that are not successful, those that do the plan and the attempt, we're hearing what it takes to get you to that point. But what we haven't heard is what it takes to be successful. We go back and forth with that in the clinical world. What was their final thought, why did you successfully do it? What we also see in the clinical world where those that made the plan and attempt, they specifically missed something, so it wasn't successful. We also ask that question; did they miss something on purpose? Those that failed the first time will usually make a second attempt or will be successful the second time around. Chair Doolittle: We're all missing something. I believe there are red flags flying, we don't see those red flags. The reason I wanted to talk about it, within ourselves and within professionals do we have anything that we can look at to maybe change that metrix where