Farmington PTA Council Plans Follow-Up to Suicide Awareness Forum

One powerful message that emerged from last week's well-attended community in Farmington Hills was the importance of talking and sharing information.

On Oct. 24, the PTA Council will host a districtwide meeting at aimed at doing just that. "Youth Depression & Suicide: What Every Parent and Teen Must Know" will feature guest speaker Jeff Edwards, who also addressed the crowd at the community forum. Edwards lost his 12-year-old son, Chase, to suicide.

Chris Greig, PTA Council past president, said the council had this topic on the radar last spring when local officials first became concerned about the number of suicide attempts and threats reported in Farmington Hills.

"When the task force for the community was formed, the PTA leaders were already starting to talk about how we needed to get parents involved in it," she said.

At the group's spring planning meeting for 2011-12 parent forums, she said, "This was on top of our list."

The council, through member Anna Cassar, kept up with the task force's activities and volunteered to do a follow-up to the Sept. 21 community meeting, focused more on parents and students.

"At first, we thought is was just going to be a parent forum," Greig said. "But the more we talked with the task force, and with Anna's leadership, we decided we really needed to open this up to students.

"If we really want to start talking about it, the kids we're worried about need to be part of that conversation, too," Greig said.

While she has heard concerns about contagion or so-called "copy cat" suicides, Greig said making everyone more aware should help mitigate the risk.

"What we're really trying to do is educate everyone to look out for each other," she said. "By hitting a broader group to look out for each other, hopefully, we could minimize that. ... After the task force community forum, it was obvious that it really is better to talk about it and bring it out into the open."

Greig attended the forum, which she described as "very informative, very moving, and it really did hit home how many people have been impacted by this."

A friend of Greig's said she had been sitting with another parent who had lost a son to suicide last year.

One of the statistics cited — that the majority of suicides are related to depression, a treatable condition — "made you realize it's a public health issue," Greig said.

After the presentation by Edwards on Oct. 24, there will be breakout sessions with discussion sheets developed in conjunction with the task force. A Farmington High student group of trained facilitators will work with adult volunteers to guide the discussions.

Greig said the PTA Council hopes to distribute magnets that list the signs of depression, which have been produced by the Farmington Area Suicide Prevention Task Force. 

The goal of the meeting is "to put information in the hands of parents and students (about) what to look out for, how to be proactive about identifying students at risk and knowing what to do when you have identified someone you're worried about," she added.

The Oct. 24 forum begins at 7 p.m. in the Farmington High School auditorium. For more information, call the Farmington School District's School and Community Relations Office at 248-489-3349.