The Brown County Mental Health and Wellness Action Team and the New Ulm Ministerial Association are offering a free safeTALK training for faith-based professionals on how to help prevent suicide. The training will be held on October 12, 2023, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the New Ulm Medical Center Auditorium. To register for the training, visit https://tinyurl.com/OctsafeTALK
SafeTALK is a half-day training program that teaches participants to recognize and engage persons who might be having thoughts of suicide and connect them with community resources trained in suicide intervention. SafeTALK stresses safety while challenging taboos that inhibit open talk about suicide.
The ‘safe’ of safeTALK stands for ‘suicide alertness for everyone’. The ‘TALK’ letters stand for the practice actions that one does to help those with thoughts of suicide: Tell, Ask, Listen and KeepSafe. SafeTALK helps participants become suicide-alert people, who are better prepared to connect persons with thoughts of suicide with life-affirming help.
Presenter: The presenter will be Glen Bloomstrom, who serves as Director of Faith Community Engagement at LivingWorks, the world’s leading suicide intervention training company. Bloomstrom is a retired 30-year US Army chaplain veteran, with combat service in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since retiring he has served as an adjunct seminary professor and a training developer for the US Department of Defense and several state health and agricultural initiatives. Under Bloomstrom’s leadership, LivingWorks recently fielded an online suicide prevention-training program for clergy and ministry leaders entitled LivingWorks Faith, which has become a central component of several state, regional and local clergy training initiatives.
The Brown County Mental Health and Wellness Action Team, which is part of the Heart of New Ulm, works throughout Brown County to reduce the stigma of mental health, improve resiliency and improve access to mental health treatment and services. This team also works to identify policies, systems and environments that can reduce the effect of poor mental health outcomes throughout the county. Providing education to the community on the various risk factors associated with mental health is a key strategy.