Speaking
‍Engagements

Discussing suicide is difficult. Don helps you handle the topic with care. Whether you are being proactive, or you are responding to a suicide in your school or workplace Don can help craft an in-person or virtual event tailored to your audience's needs.

Don's four most requested topics are listed below with a brief description of each:

1. Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One

Designed to address the needs of people who have experienced the loss of a loved one and the people who support them professionally and as family/friends.
We will address the unique paths that grief can lead us on and focus on “healing through grief,” as opposed to expecting timelines or stages to endure.
We will discuss holidays and anniversaries and how they contribute to complicated grief.
We will review the harm reduction philosophy and apply it to common coping mechanism while also emphasizing the eventual need to move forward in a healthy way.
We will discuss the benefits of therapy with a clinician who has experience in trauma informed care.
Most importantly, we will emphasize that people are not alone, despite this common feeling by those left behind, and there is a way forward to move towards a happy and healthy life.

2. The Social Stigma of Suicide

Designed to focus on how the social stigma of mental health and suicide dissuades people from getting professional and personal support. This includes those struggling with mental health issues and those who lost a loved one to suicide.
We view the varied public response to different types of mental health diagnoses and how it can affect a response from the person seeking help.
We will discuss how this stigma contributes to the large numbers of well meaning friends and family who often feel inadequate in their ability to support someone and how this fear contributes to the continued stigma.
We will examine how certain demographics including Veterans and LGBTQ+ persons are disproportionately affected.
We will discuss how it contributes to isolation of those left behind after a suicide.
We will review ways we can create social change in this area, with the hope.

3. Men and Suicide

Given that 80% of suicides are men, we examine how men are positively viewed in society as stoic and without weakness as opposed to those that allow themselves to be vulnerable and how they are conditionally accepted based on success.
We examine traditional childrearing and how this promotes boys becoming men who don’t show certain emotions and leads to men keeping things like depression and traumatic incidents to themselves. And how this in turn leads to an unbalanced rate of suicide.
We will discuss careers dominated by men including military, law enforcement, and fire fighters that have the potential to lead to PTSD and how men respond to PTSD differently than women do.
We will discuss current trends and future ways to change these dynamics, with the goal of lessening the incidence of suicide.

4. Community Suicide Prevention
and Response to a Public Suicide

This presentation more than any other will focus on the situational and cultural needs of the community at the time.
Examining how communities can promote suicide prevention.
Promoting the use of Public Health professionals to be informed in trends and ways to educate the community.
Use of marketing campaigns to promote mental health and opportunities for the community to receive information about programs.
If applicable, we will examine the response to a suicide of a prominent member of the community. The public response to a student in a local school’s death by suicide as opposed to a community leader can illicit very different community response. We will discuss how to support people personally and in the public eye. We will discuss how to talk with children about this tragedy, given how difficult this can be. We will review various ways to honor these individuals and how this can be healing for the community as a whole.

Speaking ‍Engagements

1. Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One

2. The Social Stigma of Suicide

3. Men and Suicide

4. Community Suicide Prevention and Response to a Public Suicide

Speaking
‍Engagements

4. Community Suicide Prevention
and Response to a Public Suicide