Local suicide prevention groups discuss mental health at Southview High School

SYLVANIA, Ohio — Mental health and suicide prevention can be difficult topics.

But to the Sylvania Prevention Alliance and the Lucas County Suicide Prevention Coalition, that is why the community needs to discuss them.

Wednesday evening, the two groups collaborated for their first-ever Youth Suicide Prevention event held at Southview High School.

"More than ever, students are struggling with just feeling like there’s something going on whether that's like depression or anxiety. But I think that at this age, adolescent age, you start to really feel what might be something like that and the students just really need support," explained Jen Wakefield, director of the Lucas County Suicide Prevention Coalition.

During the event, the group discussed destigmatizing mental health struggles, where to find resources and taught audience members how to talk to someone who may be struggling.

Both the Sylvania Prevention Alliance and the Lucas County Suicide Prevention Coalition say there is a need to talk about these topics within the community.

"We have seen a need in our community for mental health support and we wanted to provide that to not only our teens but our parents and our community and so we wanted to meet them here in our community and provide opportunities for them to come get new information for them that they might not have had before," said Connie White, executive director of the Sylvania Prevention Alliance.

Both organizations hope to make this an annual event in the future and continue teaching students about the importance of mental health and speaking up.

"My hope personally is that students will see that it's okay to not be okay. But they have to have someone to back them up and that's something that we can help them do between the Sylvania Prevention Alliance and our coalition for prevention," Wakefield said.

White added, "Mental health doesn’t need to be a stigma and that if they need more tools or more connections of services, we are happy to help them with that. We want to be a support for our community and our parents and our teens."

The event was recorded and is available on the Sylvania Prevention Alliance's Facebook page for anyone interested in learning more or looking for resources.