NAMI Week Eight

Wednesday I attended class eight of the NAMI Peer-to-Peer Recovery Education Program 2014 ©. The topics we covered are:

• What to do when you, or someone you know,may be contemplating suicide
  • WARNING SIGNS FOR SUICIDE
    • Threatening to hurt or kill oneself or talking about wanting to hurt or kill oneself
    • Looking for ways to kill oneself by seeking access to firearms, available pills or other means
    • Talking or writing about death, dying or suicide when these actions are out of the ordinary for the person
    • Feeling hopeless
    • Feeling rage or uncontrolled anger or seeking revenge
    • Acting reckless or engaging in risky activities – seemingly without thinking
    • Feeling trapped – like there’s no way out
    • Increased alcohol or drug use
    • Withdrawing from friends, family and society
    • Feeling anxious, agitated, unable to sleep or sleeping all the time
    • Experiencing dramatic mood changes
    • Seeing no reason for living or having no sense of purpose in life
  • Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a free 24-hour service available to anyone in the U.S. who is struggling with thoughts or plans of suicide.
• Coming out of isolation
• Mental illness and disclosure
• Take-home tool for making difficult choices (created by Marsha Linehan, PhD)
  • Pros and Cons Decision Tool (image shown)
    • List the pros of doing what you are considering on the top left side.
    • List the cons of doing what you are considering on the top right side.
    • List the pros of not doing what you are considering on the bottom left side.
    • List the pros of not doing what you are considering on the bottom right side.
    • Be as thorough a possible for each decision category.
    • Give each reason a rating according  to how significant a factor it is to you. The scale is 1 to 3 (1 = significant, 2 = very significant, and 3 = extremely significant).
    • Add up the scores diagonally.
    • Analyze your data: based on the reasons you’ve thought of, what appears to be the best plan?
• Mindfulness

We ran out of time due to active participation, and had to defer covering the following topics:

• Surviving a hospital stay
• Advance Directive for Mental Healthcare Decision Making