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WBM january 2018
MS. ROGGEMAN: In our schools there has
been a huge push for antibullying cam-paigns,
especially with the way people are
interacting with social media.
DR. BROWN: Suicide is the ultimate bully.
Maybe if we personified suicide and see
it as not part of the person, but a separate
thing that’s bullying that person, it might
be a little bit easier to discuss it.
MS. BRADFORD: That actually is what it
is, isn’t it, Alan?
DR. BROWN: It’s the ultimate bully.
MS. ELMENDORF: We’ve got to educate
people how to approach those who are
considering suicide. Kids, adolescents,
they are so much more able to cover up
how they feel and they tell their friends,
not their parents. Teachers are on the front
lines because they spend more time with
kids than their moms and dads.
MS. SHIN: I was one of Hunter Cooper’s
teachers at Cape Fear Community College.
Everybody loved him, and it was a real
shock when he took his life. Afterwards
it’s always in the back of my head, ‘Could
I have done something, should I have seen
something?’ Every one of the teachers at
Cape Fear was left wondering what could
we have done. My department chair and
I are trying to figure out if there is some-thing
that we can do to help students with
suicidal thoughts or depression.
MS. ELMENDORF: I was mental health as-sociation
chairperson in my community
for three years. The Gatekeepers Training
Class teaches what to look for, how to ap-proach
kids. It’s called QPR; its emotional
CPR. It stands for question your student,
persuade them to get help and then re-spond
by taking them to get help. If you
just comfort people by letting them know
it’s OK, you can’t do it wrong.
DR. BENNETT: There’s something tremen-dously
healing about emotional validation.
When a person feels, ‘Hey, I’m not alone,
somebody gets me,’ you’ve got your foot
in the door. And I think most people will
respond well to that.
MS. ELMENDORF: They just want some-body
to listen.
MS. BRADFORD: How do you emotionally
validate someone?