RE LOG - Spring 2017

18 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2017 How did Ransom Everglades influence your career choices? I was always a scientist but service was always connected to that. For as long as I can remember I have been about really wanting to take whatever abilities I have been given, whatever strengths I have in this world to try to make this world a better place, whatever that means. How can I help the most people? My family had instilled these kind of values, but I would say my time at Ransom Everglades nourished that desire to give back. As a high schooler, what did you aspire to do? I originally thought I would become a lawyer and free innocent people from jail because there was nothing more horrific to me than an innocent life thrown away. As a graduate student I worked with young children in psychiatric settings, disadvantaged communities and many schools. In all of these training experiences I was evaluating mental illness and suicidal issues. I discovered that we need to ask, we have to ask and we can ask – the only question: how do we do that? Did you have a personal connection to the issue of suicide? It wasn’t personal for me. Somewhere along the line of my intellectual path and professional journey, it became very clear to me that I was passionate about identification of risk. Identification of anything has to be the first key to helping, to prevention. If we can’t diagnose colon cancer we certainly can’t treat it. When did you direct that interest to suicide prevention? In about 2004, I started to realize what a very significant public health crisis we were dealing with. Currently, it is the leading cause of death in adolescent girls across the globe. It kills more people in the United States than car accidents. It is the second- leading cause of death in 10-24 year olds. But the very good news is, we know this is a preventable cause of death. It’s something we can impact. The biggest cause of suicide is a treatable medical heritable illness called depression, but we don’t think about depression the way we think about cancer or asthma. You would never hear the word “choice” when it comes to cancer. Did you know that 50 percent of people who die by suicide see their primary care doctor one month before they die? We need to be asking questions like we monitor for blood pressure. What happened next? I took the ball and I ran with it. We saw a great need and addressed it scientifically with the Columbia method of identification. (The Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale, C-SSRS.) Then I took everything I knew about advocacy and messaging, without fear and trepidation, and did everything I was able to optimize its potential impact. I am so very grateful Service through Science