SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (The Daily Dish) – Live On is a statewide effort to prevent suicide by promoting education, providing resources, and changing our culture around suicide and mental health. You have the power to save a life. If you think someone might be considering suicide, ask them! Asking does not make them more likely to attempt suicide and may actually save their life.

Joe Tuia’ana knows first-hand how reaching out to help someone can save a life. Tuia’ana is now helping Live On with suicide prevention awareness and education after successfully “loving” a young man off the ledge of an overpass bridge with open arms and the expression: “I love you, bro. I love you.” His experience has inspired the creation of a Live On Utah Suicide Prevention Playbook.

Creating safe connections and environments
• Designate safe people. This means, know who you can reach out to if you are struggling. This could be a friend or a family member you trust. This could also mean a professional, like your therapist or the crisis line at 988.
• Designate safe spaces—1) identify where you can meet others to have difficult conversations, and 2) identify things that should be limited or removed in a home if you or someone you know if struggling such as firearms, prescription medications, or even alcohol.

Safe people and places for those at risk
• If you limit access or remove alcohol, guns, pills the person at risk will be up to 80 percent less likely to attempt suicide
• If you know someone is at risk, make their environment safe.
• These conversations are intimidating. But you can become educated on what to say and how to say it through the Live On Playbook, found on the Live On Instagram page

Become Educated

  1. Normalize talking about mental health and seeking help by asking the hard questions, and by sharing your own experiences in a way that promotes hope and healing and encourages people to seek help.
  2. To learn more about safe messaging and other suicide prevention strategies, Take the Live On Playbook course for free on Instagram by following @liveonutah
  3. The playbook is a free resource that is available to all individuals that teaches each of us to recognize warning signs, have difficult conversations, and learn about the resources that exist in our state.
  4. The Live On Playbook is the first-of-its-kind suicide prevention course designed as 10 posts on Instagram that take less than 5 minutes each to complete.
  5. In less than an hour you can earn a certification of completion and become a Live On suicide prevention ambassador.
  6. Go through this training at your own pace – on public transportation, or even while you are scrolling in bed at night
  7. Our goal is to empower everyone to have conversations about their mental health, and turn every Utahns into a suicide prevention ambassadors
  8. The most important thing to know about suicide is that it’s preventable.
  9. No matter what you’re going through, there is help available.

Live On website – https://liveonutah.org/

Live On Playbook on Instagram – https://liveonutah.org/playbook/

Sponsored by Live On.