Cali Alpert:
Welcome to Dropping In, from Omega Institute. A podcast that explores the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. I'm Cali Alpert. Dropping in today, Dr. Donna Holland Barnes. Donna is a certified grief recovery specialist, a certified life coach and author of The Truth about Suicide. Part of the Truth about Series for middle school and high school students. She teaches suicide risk management to third year medical students at Howard University's Department of Psychiatry and serves as CEO of her company DHB Wellness & Associates, which provides suicide prevention training, grief recovery, and life enhancement to help individuals move through major crises. Welcome Donna, thank you for dropping in today. It's so nice to be here with you.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Hi, Cali. Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here.

Cali Alpert:
So let's start with the concept of grief. Historically, grief has been associated with the sorrow that people experience around death. More recently, the word is also associated with collective painful experiences, including racial injustice, the coronavirus, natural disasters, political divides. As well as the individual traumas that people face every day. And I'm curious, what you consider to be the most important types of grief people need to recognize.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Well, I think in general, grief is anytime you are trying to understand a loss, whenever you lost something, it doesn't matter what it is, but when you lose something major in your life, that's a part of your life. You have to sort of go through a process to get through that loss, such as during COVID. We lost a lot, We lost our freedom. We lost the ability to hug and to talk to people closely. We lost movement, when you go to work, you come back. You don't even go right home, you stop at the supermarket, you stop by some friends and you're moving but we lost mobility. And that meant a lot to people, people didn't understand what they were going through. Some people said, "Gee, I think I'm depressed." Because the symptoms for depression and grief are almost identical.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So people were getting that confused and thinking, "Wow, I'm depressed. I got to go see a doctor, I got to take some medication." And grief, you just need to roll with it. I just want people to understand that because they're not sleeping, because they're anxious because they're having problems remembering or understanding things. And they just need to sort of take care of themselves and try to be as healthy as possible. Get some exercise, get that blood flowing, before they feel that they have to rush to go see a doctor and get some medication.

Cali Alpert:
So that actually leads beautifully into my next question, which is, in your experience, do you think that people are conditioned to minimize what is considered to be less severe versions of loss?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Oh, sure.

Cali Alpert:
[crosstalk 00:03:34], relationship, a job often, you minimize it because you're comparing it to somebody down the street going through that the other thing.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Absolutely. Because in my support groups, they'll minimize who they lost, even in the support group. "Well, I just lost my boyfriend and I know that Carol lost her son or that Bob lost his wife. And I just lost my book ... " Don't minimize that. The fact that you lost somebody that you were close to, the pain is ... You can't compare pain and don't do that to yourself. Just to talk about comparisons. If people have lost someone through a divorce, if people had lost a house, their job, same thing, same thing. With what's going on in society, it just seems like a lot of organizations aren't floating. CEOs are stepping down, CEOs are getting fired, directors. That's hard to deal with.

Donna Holland Barnes:
We just had a good colleague who was fired from the directorship of this great organization that we were all a part of, in reference to suicide prevention. And that had to hurt because she didn't understand it. She didn't know what she was going through. She didn't why, they didn't even tell her. You can't minimize loss. We really shouldn't. I'll joke around and say, "Look, if you lost your shoe, that's important." Someone's crying and upset about it. That's important to them.

Cali Alpert:
I think that's very validating for people to hear it. It seems, as if that is a pretty pervasive thing, the minimizing thing. Even the example you just gave, which leads to people losing their identity or their definition of themselves.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Absolutely, absolutely. The CEOs or the directors, that's their identity, that's their whole life. Thank you for using that word.

Cali Alpert:
You're welcome. And you don't hear people attaching the concept of grief to that sort of premise as often, it seems. Is that your experience as well?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yes, Because they feel like they have to grieve alone. Nobody wants to hear that. Also, oh, big deal You lost your $250,000 job. You'll get another one. You're smart. And so they have to grieve. They have to grieve in silence, in silence because people just ... Unless, it happens to them, they just don't get the severity of that loss.

Cali Alpert:
What would you suggest, before we get to some of the deeper versions of your work and versions of grief and loss. What would you suggest to people or what would like to see happen in society that might make it safer for people to validate all these different versions of grief?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Well, we hold our life experiences that we're not that proud of secretly. We don't tell anybody because we're afraid that they're going to pass judgment on us. Oh, what did she do? This, that and the other. So we have to be very quiet about some of the things that we lose, because we don't know how people are going to interpret it. And we don't know what people are going to say. We don't know ... You never know what people are going to do with information, period. If you say I went to Burger King, I don't know what people are going to do with that information.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So restorative telling is just something that I like to work with. I want people to talk. I want people to say what they need to say, and I don't want people not to hold back and just share.

Cali Alpert:
Your work with suicide prevention and trauma has been at the center of your career. How has the way society handles the topic of suicide changed over the last say 10 years do you think?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Ten years, not so much. Thirty, yes. Because when I got into this business, I got into ... I fell into it. It was something that I was seeking as a child. I want to get into suicide prevention. I want to go to school for it. It was something that I had never even thought of. I lost my son to suicide in 1990 and did not know anything about suicide, knew nothing about it. And at the time, I was kind of in my early 40s. And you know how you kind of have two kind of careers, at least three in your lifetime. I was moving into a whole nother career and I wanted that to be law. So I was applying to law schools because previously I was in the insurance industry and I wanted to sort of connect the two and get to legal contracts.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So I was really working on passing my LSAT and applying for a couple of different law schools. And I was actually waiting to hear them. And when I lost my son, my whole life just shifted. It just turned. It was never the same again. And I need for people to understand that. When your life changes, when you lose a family member, a loved one to suicide. It knocks you off your feet. You never go back to who you used to be. It's like a Mack truck just hitting you and knocking you 20 feet. And then you get up and you got these broken bones. You have to adjust to this whole new you and adjusting to it takes time. It takes understanding.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So what I was doing to understand suicide and what it was all about, I started reading and reading and reading. There weren't that many books, so I had to really search for them. And the more I learned about suicide, the more I was trying to understand it. And I also talked, I don't know why. It's like I didn't even care what people thought. I was just talking and telling. Oh, my son took his own life. My son took his own life. I even had a family member said, "Auntie Donna, why do you keep telling people Mark took his own life. Why do you do that?" I think why I was doing it was because I wanted and desperately needed somebody to say the same thing happened to me. I lost my uncle. I lost my mom. I just needed to hear that. And I didn't, I couldn't seem to be around or meet anybody who had experienced what I experienced. I was so alone.

Donna Holland Barnes:
My family was there to support me, but they didn't know what to do with me. I needed to talk to somebody who survived a suicide loss like me. So I think that's why I kept talking about it. I was waiting for someone to say, "Oh, me too." And I wasn't getting that. But anyway, so as I'm reading and reading and reading, I said to myself, "I might as well get credit for all this reading that I'm doing." So I start thinking about law school and went back to school to work on my doctorate and I wanted sociology. I specifically wanted sociology. When I think about this, I don't know why I specifically wanted it, but I didn't want psychology because suicide is more than just an emotional thing. There's too many of us who suffer from mental disorders and depression and emotional things. And we don't kill ourselves only a small number, kill themselves.

Donna Holland Barnes:
It's more than that. When you want to think about suicide, it's much more than that. It's society. It's the things that are going on around you. It's all types of things. So I wanted to look at suicide from a sociological perspective.

Cali Alpert:
Even in listening to you talk about this, your loss and this topic and how you fell into it, creates an approachability that sort of inherently de-stigmatizes the topic that has been so stigmatized for so long. So it helps me to even understand more easily why you have been approached and looked to for just energy around it, it seems like it makes it more approachable for I'm sure, lots of other people that you help. Looking back in the rear view mirror, for when you were trying to find your way through your own loss and grief. And now knowing what you know now, are there one or two things that stand out, if somebody had taken you aside and told you?

Donna Holland Barnes:
That's kind of hard you because when you're not actually experiencing it, then you're still going to think the way you normally think. Because as parents, we just think we know our child. And if someone says, "No, your child likes red. No, my child likes purple. I know my son, don't tell me about my son." And so whatever they tell you, and if it's doesn't sit well with you, you're not going to listen. You're not going to listen to it. Number one, if it's something that in reference to their behavior, you might take it personally and think that you're not a good mother. And so you deny, deny, deny, and don't listen to it.

Donna Holland Barnes:
And that resonated with me because I had a friend that said, "Mark looks very lonely. I think he's lonely." And I said, "What are you talking about? He has a lot of friends. He's had a Red Sox game right now, as we're speaking with all of his friends." I knew that you can be lonely in a crowd, but I wasn't thinking in those terms. And I didn't bother to say, "Well, what do you mean? Tell me more." I didn't bother to say that. I just brushed it off. I said, "What you are talking about? He's got a lot of friends, he's at a ballgame right now with friends." I wish that I had listened to this particular person that said that.

Cali Alpert:
Can you speak to the exponentially growing numbers of suicides in the US these days? And I'm also curious about your thoughts on the difference between biochemistry versus circumstances, how each contribute to suicidal ideations and tendencies.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yeah. I think we had such an increase in suicide because when I got into this arena, it was like, 29,000 people a year. Now, it's up to almost 50,000 a year. So it has increased 33% in the past 30 years. It's just amazing. Why has it increased? Who knows, who can really put their finger on it? We're not really looking at the right things, but I will say one thing, is that, the question to me, is why are we so bad at preventing suicide? Why can't we do that? We have all these organizations, we have all of these tools to prevent suicide. Why can't we save people? Because they still keep killing themselves. The government has poured money, more money, more money, more money to look at this and look at that and look at the brain. And they're still killing themselves, very high numbers.

Donna Holland Barnes:
I think we're looking at the wrong thing. I think we equate it too much with depression. Suicide and depression, people think they're synonymous. You go to a doctor, tell them you're depressed. They're going to take out their prescription pad. "Okay. All right. Well tell me, and how long has this been going on? All right. Well you need some medication." Especially, if they say you're suicidal, it's immediately depression, immediately a prescription is written. That's not what the issue is. The issue is that they are thinking of death as an option. They don't want to go on. They don't want to live anymore. They are having problems having hope. That's what you talk about. That's what you tease out. How did you lose your hope? How did you lose your belief system? How do you no longer think about how much your family is going to suffer, if you go? Let's talk about this, let's talk about this.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So that's what they need to do. Instead of taking out that prescription pad and writing a prescription on depression, they might not even be depressed. They're just having issues with how their life is right now and how their life is turning out, when they had such great expectations. So that's one of the reasons we could possibly be having such high rates of suicides because we're not looking at the right thing. We're focusing on the wrong thing. And then the other question that you asked me was, the difference between biomedical and social circumstances. I like to say public health, but I think the word has changed now to social justice or what have you. They're always changing it, always changing the language. Who are these people that are changing the language? How do they have so much power?

Donna Holland Barnes:
But anyway, I guess my previous answer about why it's going up, tells you how I feel about biomedical. I have had discussions with psychiatrists. I have had psychiatrists say, "No, they have a mental disorder. If you think about death, you got a mental disorder and it needs to be treated. The mental disorder needs to be treated. So if they've never had a diagnosis, we need to search for that diagnosis. Treat it, medicate it and then they won't think of suicide." So I'm not for the biomedical because there's honestly, other reasons that people take their own life. Other than the fact that they suffer from mental disorder because a mental disorder is supposed to distort your thinking. Thinking of suicide is never a rational thing. It's distorted thinking, but they have made it in their head rational. I can't go on. I have no purpose. This doesn't make sense. I don't see it, but they just need to talk about it. They just need to talk about why they're feeling this way and get that out before you start searching for mental disorder or writing a prescription.

Cali Alpert:
So I'm hearing, that you're a proponent more of the preemptive and preventative attention paid to these conditions versus reactive once somebody is showing great signs of [crosstalk 00:19:28].

Donna Holland Barnes:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Cali Alpert:
That reframe is so powerful too. The idea of focusing on the fact that people consider suicide an option, and that hope is so inextricably tied to that. How do people begin, or professionals in these fields or parents or friends begin to restore hope for their loved ones that might be in trouble?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Just let them know that, I don't know what you're going through, but you're not alone. I am here for you. If you need someone to talk to, let me find you a therapist. Let me find you a good therapist that can listen. If you don't want to tell me, maybe you'll tell a therapist, but let me find one for you. Or will you let me bring you to a therapist or maybe you are it, I'll listen. I can listen. And to do just that. Listen, don't try to solve the problem. Don't try to share your experiences with their experiences and compare them. Oh, I had a neighbor that went through the same thing. Just listen to what they're saying. Don't respond. The only time you should respond is, if they say something that you don't quite understand, and then you say, "Well, help me understand that."

Donna Holland Barnes:
And then sometimes, just talking about it. It's like you got this balloon, and you stick a pin in it. And it deflates, it's like, "Ah, I got that of my chest. Oh, my God. Thank you for listening. You've help me look at this differently." But what you're doing is, you're restoring hope because they've lost it. And you're just restoring their hope. It's not all gone. It might not be the way you want it to be, but the hope is still there. And sometimes just reminding them, what would your mother say, if you did that? How will your child live with that for the rest of their lives? Sometimes just reminding them of that because once they get into that thought of suicide, they're in this black hole and they can't get out because people in my group can't understand, how do they do this to me? How do they do that to me? Because they weren't thinking about you, they weren't thinking about you. They lost all thoughts of the people who love them.

Cali Alpert:
There's that term, you're only as sick as your secrets.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yes.

Cali Alpert:
And it feels like such a great irony based on what you just shared, that just the stigma or silence around the topic of suicide can often exacerbate it.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yeah.

Cali Alpert:
The prospect of it. Do you think that it would help the numbers and the suicide rates in the United States, if something as simple and I certainly don't want to minimize this experience for families and just how deep it can be. But do you think one fix or contribution to fixing the problem would be, if families just became more comfortable talking about this topic, is that too [crosstalk 00:22:41]?

Donna Holland Barnes:
It's a complicated issue. It's a very complicated issue because there are people who argue, that if you put too much focus on it, people are going to start normalizing it. Kids talk about it all the time and you got 13 Reasons Why, and the poetry, the songs. You're kind of normalizing it. And it's really making some people step back and say, "Look, I understand you guys are trying to prevent it, but it looks like you're normalizing it more than anything else." And so you have to kind of balance it. I just think that families need to be aware. They don't have to talk about it. They just need to be aware and question somebody that they're worried about.

Donna Holland Barnes:
It can be as simple as question whether or not a gun is safe in your home for protection or whether somebody might use it to take their own life. You think, "Well, my gun is locked." They're not going to really put the bullets in another room or hide the bullets because if they really need it in an emergency, they're going to keep it right there. They make up excuses that, the gun is locked. But kids know, they know how to use a gun. They know where to find a gun. They know all of that, if a gun is their choice. So just making sure there's not anybody in your family that could be on the fence, could be thinking about it. I never knew my son was even thinking about that. So I would've never questioned him about it. I'm sitting up here saying we need to do this and paying attention to our family members. He showed me what he wanted to show me. Kids are very resourceful when it comes to masking their true feelings.

Cali Alpert:
Right.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So it's hard. And especially, if they're teenagers, you don't know if they're being typical, or they're being troubled? How do you do that? How do you figure that out? So I might make it sound like it's just do that with your family and question this. It's not, because again, we don't know if they're being typical or they're troubled or they're masking, they're masking. They're not showing you how they really feel because they love you and they don't want to hurt your feelings. And they don't want you to feel guilty.

Cali Alpert:
Or worried.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yeah. Right, or worried. So they're not going to tell you anything. They're not going to tell you anything. So it's hard.

Cali Alpert:
I believe I read something recently that spoke to the idea that children, teens are apt to share some of their darker and more troubled feelings with friends more than they are parents and teachers. Speaking of masking, is that true? And what would you suggest we do as a society in terms of waking up peers to being more aware of flagging issues with their friends?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yeah. Well, that's a very good point because we know this, we know that they'll tell their friends before they tell an adult, a responsible adult. And the first thing they say is, "Don't tell anybody." And the first thing the friend does is listen, they don't tell anybody. And I always say, "Would you rather lose a friend and save a life?" So tell. And my granddaughter, when she was in, I guess, fifth or sixth grade. One of her classmates just blurted out. I want to kill myself. And so, my granddaughter just didn't know how to respond to that. So she told her mom, she went home and told her mom. So my daughter, her mom, called the school and said, "I want you to know that Jane Smith had said this in class and my daughter came home and told me, so I'm telling you." They called the parent and said, "This is what your daughter said in class." And the parent says, "Well, how do she said that? Well, she said it to Zara and Zara went home and told her mom. So her mom called us." The parent calls my daughter and says, "Don't you ever." She says, "If my daughter ever says anything, you call me. Don't call ... "

Donna Holland Barnes:
And so my daughter just said, "Oh, my God." The school handled it so poorly. They handled it so poorly. They should have left my daughter out it, they should have left Zara out of it. And how do you know the mother wasn't the cause of her saying that? The school just didn't want to have anything to do with it. She was on the school's grounds, the school should have taken that and dealt with it and talked with the young lady. But it-

Cali Alpert:
So where's the learning opportunity here with this story?

Donna Holland Barnes:
The learning opportunity is that, take responsibility where it is first of all. My granddaughter did the right thing. She told an adult that this child said something. It's just that the school needs to take more responsibility and shouldn't have skirted it and handled it that way, because it doesn't have to be divulged where you got the information. The only thing that needs to be addressed is the fact that your daughter said it, et cetera.

Cali Alpert:
I've read that there have been staggering increases in suicides among the black community, especially black teens. And I wonder, if you can explain this crisis and what you'd like society at large to be aware of or do to help.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So there are several of us who are in the field of suicide prevention and intervention, among people of color. We got together and we wrote a report about it and made some recommendations on what society needs to do about this increase. And this report, we called Ringing the Alarm. It was spearheaded and sponsored by Congresswoman Bonnie Coleman Watson. She wanted us to get together and write the report. And so we made some recommendations and IMH got ahold of the report and he said he wanted to meet with us. What can we do in reference to funding? And we told them, we want to look at suicide among our own people. We don't want to do control groups, comparing. Just want to do some in-focus, population research that just looks at suicide among young black males. So that we know, we know why they're doing this. So we can at least pinpoint, we don't even know their zip codes. We don't even know, if they come from intact families or divorced families or single parent homes. We don't know if they're educated. We don't know anything about these young black boys, except the fact that they're beginning to think about it.

Donna Holland Barnes:
What needs to be done is, our communities need to pay more attention to it, get trained on how to recognize the signs when someone's in suicidal crisis. Churches need to be very robust in discussing this type of thing among their parishioners. So that they don't feel that it's a sin, or they don't feel that, if they don't read the Bible enough that people aren't going to take their own life. They need to dispel all these myths about how religion will keep you from killing yourself, it doesn't necessarily do that. A belief system helps you, but it's a little bit more than going to church every Sunday and reading Bible. So churches are a staple in our communities. And so we like to start there.

Cali Alpert:
Can you speak to the increasing suicide rates touching younger children overall in recent years?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Across cultures?

Cali Alpert:
Yes.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Wow.

Cali Alpert:
And does that beg the question that we need more risk assessment programs in schools? Which I know you work very [crosstalk 00:31:40].

Donna Holland Barnes:
Yeah. Yeah. I just wish the schools would take more of a part in the suicide prevention. I'm not so certain that suicide is trending. It could be a trend to think about it and to talk about it. I don't know. I mean, there are pacts, there are suicide pacts among these young kids, but I wish I knew why the increase was so high. It could be the availability of drugs because a lot of it is overdoses. I can't even answer that question on why young kids are killing themselves at higher rates than they did when I was growing up.

Cali Alpert:
Can you speak to what you'd like to see inside of our societal infrastructure? Be it, in our communities and schools and churches, wherever. Just as the next step in risk assessment to suicide prevention awareness increasing [crosstalk 00:32:56].

Donna Holland Barnes:
I would like to say that. I would like to say, "Oh, we need more of risk assessments. We need this, we need that." But if you just teach coping skills, because we need to reach these kids while they're young and we don't want to go, "Suicide, suicide." We need to teach them coping skills. We need to teach them that life matters. We need to teach them those kind of things, so that they don't think death is an option. So that they know how to cope with things, because it's very hard to prevent something that can happen at the spur of the moment. You just don't know, because the vulnerability has to be there. The method has to be there. The impulsivity has to be there. And the fearlessness, the fear of not caring whether you die or not.

Donna Holland Barnes:
Once those four things line up like lucky sevens, they're a goner, they're a goner. And we might have thought we had done everything. So we just don't know, suicide is inevitable. So this is why I work closely with families who have lost someone to suicide, because there are millions and millions of families suffering every year from suicide and they need to be cared for because suicide is inevitable. It's going to happen.

Cali Alpert:
What can you suggest to people that are listening to this podcast, that might experience suicidal tendencies in their family, amongst their communities or loved ones? What kind of conversations can they have to guide these people through?

Donna Holland Barnes:
If they think there's somebody in their family, a friend, a colleague, a fellow student, a neighbor that they're concerned about. It would be really great, if you could take that person aside and have a nice quiet place at least about an hour. And just say, "I've noticed that your behavior has changed." All the things that make you feel that this person might be thinking about suicide, just listen to them. "And I'm a little worried, because generally when people go through what you're going through or say the things that you have said, or do the things that you have done. Sometimes they're thinking about taking their own life. I'm just wondering, if that's what you're thinking." And you got to say in a way that you really sort of have empathy, you get to have empathy and listen.

Donna Holland Barnes:
So it goes back to what I was saying before. We've got listen to the person and let them talk, not try to solve the problem, not anything. But you got to let them know that they can trust you because they're not going to tell you ... You're in an elevator and you say, "Hey, let me talk to you for a second. The elevators coming, but let's talk." You got really let them know that you're not going to pass judgment on them because that's what they're afraid of. They don't want you to pass judgment. They don't want your [inaudible 00:36:39]. There's still a little bit of pride left. They're trying to hold onto that.

Donna Holland Barnes:
If you can't do that, if you have your own biases in reference to suicide, find somebody who can. Find somebody that they're close to and say, "You know what? I'm really worried about Gerard. I'm just so worried about him. And I think I'm the one that can talk to him, and get him to talk. So do you think that you could help me, help him or talk to him?" So if you can't do it, find somebody who would.

Cali Alpert:
What advice do you have for someone who's mourning the loss of a loved one by suicide and how can people mourn well, in general?

Donna Holland Barnes:
I would like for people to consider a support group, to be around others. So that they can know that they're not alone and they can see the that their feelings are validated because people share their stories. In my groups, people share, people talk, and it's a safe place. They can tell whatever's on their mind. And if it triggers somebody, we ask that, if they want to turn the camera off or leave the room, they can do that. But that's what I would like, if it works for them. Support groups aren't for everybody. I had someone who just said, "Every time the Zoom support group is over. It's horrible. I don't like the feeling that I have. I'm crying and crying and crying." And I said, "Well, let me keep coming, but I keep crying and it's awful. It just brings up all this emotion." That person is not a support group person. That person would do better with a one-on-one with a priest or specialist. So it's not for everybody, but if they can join a support group, that's my number one suggestion.

Cali Alpert:
Finally, today I have three questions that I like to ask every guest here on Dropping In. The first one, I'd like to grant you one wish for our listeners, what would it be?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Oh, boy. One wish for the listeners is that they are open minded and don't have any expectations of your coworker, your family member. Especially, after going through COVID because people have just changed after COVID and just meet people where they are. Meet them where they are and try to sort of, understand. That's all, but meeting people where they are.

Cali Alpert:
What is something you wish for yourself?

Donna Holland Barnes:
For myself, is to continue helping people and servicing and just enjoying life. I'm at that part of life now. I'm 73. I don't know how much longer I have, 5 years, 10 years. Who knows? But I'm enjoying it. I just want to continue to enjoy it, because I'm doing whatever I feel like I wanted to.

Cali Alpert:
Finally, what is the most important offering you'd like listeners to take away from our conversation today?

Donna Holland Barnes:
The important offering that I'd like for them. More or less, make sure it's in the schools because we're talking about the suicide rate among young kids. Make sure it's a part of the curriculum. Make sure that kids understand coping mechanisms. I think we really need to focus, not so much on suicide, but more on coping mechanisms and sort of get some sort of curriculum involved around coping mechanisms. And they do some stuff. They have circles, safe circles for kids and they put them in the circles. And I sat in a couple of those. And all it is, how was your weekend and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Anybody have any problems? It's nothing, you're not really getting to the meat of what these kids are going through. And it's run by people that they don't even feel like they can trust. So make sure that the school has a safe place for these kids to talk about what they want to talk about.

Cali Alpert:
So I want to thank you so much Donna, for spending this time today with me. It's been such a pleasure and so informative. So thank you so much. If our listeners would like to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Donna Holland Barnes:
If they want to Google me, Donna Holland Barnes, they can Google me and see the papers that I've written. People put stuff up there when I speak of something like that, but that's probably the best thing. I have a webpage with all of my accolades and everything that I've done. I'm kind of humble.

Cali Alpert:
So before we say goodbye, are there any crisis hotlines or suicide prevention numbers that you'd like to offer?

Donna Holland Barnes:
Well, the main number would be 1-800-273-TALK, T-A-L-K or 273-8255. That is the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. And they give you an option. Press one, if you're a vet. Press two, if you're a civilian. And what that does when you call that number, it doesn't matter what part of the country you are in. It immediately connects with a crisis center within your zip code that you're calling from.

Cali Alpert:
Thank you. Important information. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Donna Holland Barnes:
You are so welcome.

Cali Alpert:
The Dropping In Podcast is provided for informational purposes only and not intended as medical advice or as a substitute for the medical advice of a physician. If you or someone you know is struggling, please do call the hotline Donna mentioned, 800-273-TALK.

Cali Alpert:
Thanks for dropping in with Omega Institute. If you like, what you hear, tell your friends and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps [inaudible 00:43:24] find us. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. To learn more, visit eomega.org/membership and check out our many online learning opportunities featuring your favorite teachers and thought leaders at eomega.org/online learning. I'm Cali Alpert, producer and host of Dropping In. The music and mix are by Scott Mueller. Thanks for dropping in.