By Trish Svoboda

Through their “Strengthen Clay County Grant” funded by KDADS, The Clay Counts Coalition recently sponsored an Applied Suicide Intervention Training or ASIST.

Lori Martin, community mobilizer and retired principal is passionate about prevention and explains how the ASIST program came about.

During training, participants learned about the increasing number of emergency room visits for suicide attempts in North Central Kansas, especially for females. In this region during the month of July, there were 162 attempts, 86% were females ages 10-24.

Lori said it’s a problem that’s alive and not well in the area. The hope with programs like ASIST and others that Lori is involved in is to bring suicide awareness, training, and prevention education to communities, making the subject easier to talk about, and to have available resources for those who are struggling with mental illness