HER Career

There is a suicide every 16 hours in Arkansas. There were over 600 suicide deaths in the state in 2018. There is a suicide every 12 minutes nationwide. There were just under 48,000 total suicide deaths last year across the U.S.

These are the facts about suicide, according to violence prevention specialist Susie Reynolds Reece.

As founder and executive director of Suicide Prevention Allies, or SPA, a Hot Springs-based nonprofit organization that started a grassroots coalition, Reece and her organization are working to change these numbers.

After navigating the effects of her father’s own suicide, Reece began volunteering for suicide awareness causes and found that doors opened to her in the field of suicide prevention.

“I wanted to do something for the community and I realized that I was good at it. I’m good at talking about this, I have been for a long time. And the work makes sense to me,” she said.

As the only full-time, covered employee of SPA, Reece has a hand in nearly everything the organization does.

The nature of her profession makes for an unpredictable work schedule, but that’s just fine by Reece.

“There is no normal day. Every day is different. A typical day is pretty much not knowing what I’m going to be doing. And that’s good for me,” she said.

While SPA and Reece are working to lower suicide deaths across the board, she said a broad-strokes approach is ineffective in dealing with the issue.

“Suicide prevention needs to be really comprehensive, and the problem is if you’re going to do it the right way, you need to do it for every person. That means customizing your approach for each person,” she said. With Reece at the helm, SPA does just that. When it comes to helping students with issues regarding suicide, Reece feels a familiar, comfortable tactic is necessary for demystifying and stripping away the stigma surrounding discussions on the subject.

“Creating things that they have ownership of is important. For example, we have a program running out at Lake Hamilton. It’s been running for two years now, and it’s really built around the students who are involved in it. So depending on who is there that day, different ideas come out, and different program ideas will come out of that, and then fundraising ideas. They propel it forward. And as adults, we’re supposed to kind of guide and control it to some extent. But not too much, because the whole point is for them to be empowered. It’s true suicide prevention before something bad happens.”

Reece said school programs like this are the exception, though. In her experience, school administrators generally feel uncomfortable with her discussing suicide prevention with students.

“They’re scared. They don’t know what to do, so they’d rather not do anything because they don’t want to make it worse. However, not doing anything doesn’t make it better either. I get calls from every community at this point, and they’re all struggling. I had a call last week, and they’ve lost three teenagers in a month,” said Reece. Another group that SPA and Reece work closely with is first responders. “Again, it’s important to give them their voice. I’m not a first responder. It’s not my role to go in and talk at them, but to empower them and find those leaders and advocates within those populations who can then stand up, because they’ll respect someone who has a similar background,” she said.

“We are working on some legislation. I’m on several different boards, and one of the things I’m on is called Heroes Behind the Line and their first responder group. They’re working on creating legislation so that if they have mental health needs they can go seek that without losing their jobs. Because

I know several who have been fired for needing care. And once they get their care, they’re fine, right? But unfortunately, they’re let go because they’re considered a liability and it’s really unfortunate.”

She said SPA is also currently working on crisis intervention team training for law enforcement to learn how to de-escalate a situation in which they might encounter a person contemplating or attempting suicide.

Reaching out to the millennial generation is an aspect of suicide prevention SPA intends to become more involved with.

“We’re talking about programming and developing some options for the development community because there’s a lot of millennials who are isolated, and they’re doing all this development and internet work. And they’re very mentally unhealthy. So we want to try to give them some other options.”

While Reece couldn’t share details, she said to look for SPA on iTunes or the App Store sometime in the future.

For now, SPA has a strong internet presence on social media.

“Our social media has been extraordinarily helpful in reaching a much larger audience. I think we got a reach of over 100,000 on just a few little images,” she said.

However, SPA and Reece will not stop at just students, first responders, law enforcement, and millennials receiving suicide prevention education and services.

“We’re also trying to get suicide prevention and mental health education for them as a requirement across the board. So right now, educators are the only ones in the state that have to have suicide prevention education. And it’s a minimum of two hours every five years. So think of all the other professions out there that are not required to have suicide prevention education. That’s a little concerning for me. I’d like to see more education around because I think there is still such a mystery around what it really is that it’s important to do that.”

Along with age and profession, culture and religion are other major factors that must be taken into account when attempting to spread awareness about suicide and prevention, she said.

“Culturally speaking, if you’re looking at Latino communities, this is just an extraordinarily taboo subject. They feel like it’s a spiritual issue. So you have to keep in mind those kinds of mentalities. If you want to be effective, it’s not my role to go in and touch your core values or your core beliefs whatsoever,” she said.

“That’s their belief, their faith in God. But what I can do is give them an alternative perspective and I can say that I understand this is how you feel, but have you ever thought of this? And I’ve had several go, ‘You know, I never did.’ And it’s changed the way they look at it because they don’t know what happens in someone’s last minutes while they’re alive.”

Though SPA has been statewide for some time, it is expanding across the country.

The organization currently has workers in Florida and Colorado, and Reece recently spoke at a national conference in Washington, D.C. She has since been encouraged to continue such speaking engagements in other states.

“We’re having some talks with some larger, well-known individuals and organizations about what we’re doing and we’re talking about some of the programs we’re doing and creating processes. So we’re working on a lot of different things in a lot of different areas,” she said.

Regardless of how much it expands in the future, Reece said Hot Springs will always be SPA’s true home.

“We started here. So I want to stay connected to this community. I think it’s really important. And it’s where we had the opportunity to build something.”