“The cultures that settled here were very independent, on their ow

Jacque Gray, PhD

n and took care of themselves,” she continued.  “We take care of ourselves. We don’t go outside of our family. We don’t talk about certain things. Those types of beliefs are part of that culture in a lot of rural frontier areas.”
      According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 32,000 Americans committed suicide in 2005, which made it the eleventh leading cause of death in the United States for all ages. Among American Indians and Alaska Natives ages 15-34, the CDC says suicide is the second leading cause of death.
      Gray, a native of Oklahoma who’s of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, came to UND in 1999 and joined the Center for Rural Health in 2004 to work on rural and Native mental health issues. She received a campus suicide prevention grant for American Indian students. Working with tribal leaders and state legislators led to broader efforts involving statewide community-based suicide prevention programs. 
     

Part of intervening with someone who’s suicidal is to talk about exploring other options ... they want that emotional pain they’re feeling to stop.

“When we wrote up the policy brief on suicide in North Dakota, we noted that out of the 800 suicides in the state over a ten-year period, over 700 of them were non-Indian,” Gray said. “This is a North Dakota problem, not just an American Indian problem.”
      Gray recites a list of organizations, projects and grants in which she’s involved in the area of suicide prevention, as well as research aimed at gathering data to define problems and determine which practices are most effective. She says it’s a multifaceted approach.  
      “Part of it is working with a lot of the same people in these various projects and interfacing with them,” she explained. “We’re developing the capacity to prevent suicides and to help people become more

Russ McDonald, PhD

resilient, healthier, having more success and feeling positive about what they’re doing, as opposed to being so distraught and hopeless that they not only entertain suicide, but attempt to complete it.”
       A program funded by the North Dakota IDeA Network of Biomedical Research (INBRE) – administered by the medical school – is a good example of this approach. At Cankdeska Cikana Community College on the Spirit Lake Reservation, Gray and Leander “Russ” McDonald, PhD, former director for the National Resource Center on Native American Aging, are engaged in teaching students about the basics of research.
      Students at the college take courses, participate in projects and will eventually learn to write grants. The project ties in with a tribal suicide prevention program that includes cultural camps for youth and community members, education and training in intervention.
      “There will be graduate students from clinical psychology placed in the community to help increase the amount of mental health services that are available, providing more access for people to get in for services,” she said. “This approach comes at the problem from all directions.”
      The goal is to use the knowledge and experience gained at Spirit Lake to develop similar programs in conjunction with the other tribal colleges and communities across North Dakota. Research to discover which practices work best and training to implement them will lead to more effective suicide prevention programs.
      “Part of intervening with someone who’s suicidal is to talk about exploring other options because they’re only seeing that one,” Gray said. “It isn’t that they want to die, it’s that they want that emotional pain they’re feeling to stop.”
      Providing mental health first aid is the first step toward stopping the pain.