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| San Pedro Daily |  |
Friday, September 2, 2011 Please don't litter! |
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ISLAND
SUPERMARKET
"Best
Prices - Best Quality - Best Service"Phone: 501-226-2972 or 501-226-2973 FREE
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Suicide
Awareness For Teachers
Today, teachers and school
counselors filled a double room at the
BIM offices in Belize City. It wasn't teachers training per se, but
awareness - raising about teen suicides and the warning signs for this.
It's the third annual Mental
Health Conference and the
centerpiece
is a suicide resource pamphlet called "Suicide Risk Guidelines: A
Resource for Teachers."
The idea is to empower teachers with the tools to identify and intervene in cases where teen suicide is real risk. Dr. Claudina Cayetano helped develop the document and told us more about why teachers should see suicides as preventable: 
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"This is directly for teachers. We thought that most of these adolescence in school and sometimes the teachers are overwhelm with so much things that they need to do. It is important that we present them with some guidelines in order to recognize the signs and symptoms of teenagers that may consider suicide." Jules Vasquez "What necessitated the introduction and the publication of this pamphlet?" 
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"At the beginning of the year we started to hear about the issues with some of the teenagers that had attempted suicide and then I think it was important for us from the Ministry of Health for the mental health program to do something in order to target this population. It's not just because of that, part of our program - we have a strategic plan that started from 2007 - 2011 and so we have included suicide as part of our plan. This is very important for us because as you know no one should die because of suicide. We know we are going to die but suicide and then as a teenager - I think it's very tragic. Even though it's not only in Belize, EMO is not only in Belize as you know - it's everywhere in the world and we were not do alarm about that because you know suicide has always been in Belize to a lesser extent, not too much, but we do know that we have the statistics to proof that suicide has been happening in Belize. In fact we have higher numbers than in the past than what we have recently. But then it was important to understand that culture that what was happening in Benque, so we did work with some of the organizations there." 
"But you don't know who
they are, this is just what they
are saying
but when you go and talk to the kids - no one is coming forward to say
that they are "EMO" they would not do that. The adolescence that we had
the opportunity unfortunately attempted suicide; I did an interview
with her. They will talk about that but most of the times they always
have personal problems - either problems at home, problems with their
parents, problems in school, with their boyfriends and those are the
things that became more important for them - why they felt that they
want to attempt suicide, so they had more issues even though EMO is
their cover-up. Some of these teenagers have problems that were driving
them - those were the triggers for them to want to attempt suicide. We
find teenagers that have very poor coping skills, poor family support,
they are socially isolated and they don't feel competent to disclose or
talk about what's going on with them and then they have a very low
self-esteem, so all these ingredients together is ready to explode. The
only alternative for them is to think that they will drink "gramoxone"
or drink a bunch of pills or cut themselves - that's what tends to
happen."
"Belize fortunately for us in the Caribbean is not doing that bad. The rates are quite low compare to other countries. When you compare Belize with Central America - the rates are still low compare to Central America. So we are not that bad but people should not die because of suicides. Suicide like the pamphlet says is preventable and depression is treatable. So if we are saying it is preventable - this is what we want to do - prevent it." And while there has been public concern about the female teen suicides in Benque Viejo this year, Belize's suicide rate continues to be low. So far 16 have been reported this year. CH7 MENTAL
HEALTH
ASSOCIATION
HOSTS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
The Mental Health Association
is today holding the first of a two day conference on suicide. The
theme is, “Why are we so misunderstood? An Innovative Approach to
Suicide Prevention and Intervention”. Through the conference, the
Association is hoping to provide comprehensive and well researched
information on the current situation on suicide in Belize, prevention
methods, and treatment guidelines to nurses, police, school counselors,
clergy and others interested in the issue. Love News spoke with
President of the Mental Health Association, Jenny Lovell.
Jenny Lovell – President, Mental Health Association “We’ve been getting calls from all over the country, not only from school counselors but from parents, from community people. We were getting calls from Benque and when we started looking at the numbers we thought that since we didn’t have a conference this year we should do something to not just talk about suicide but some of the signs, symptoms and what you should not do when there is an attempt or there is an actual suicide.” One of the presenters is Doctor Claudina Cayetano, psychiatrist and director of the Mental Health Program under the Ministry of Health. According to Dr. Cayetano, more Belizean youth are committing suicide. Dr. Claudina Cayetano – Director, Mental Health Program “It is a problem and the reason why we are doing this is because we are all concerned. We are seeing changes in terms of many years ago older people attempted suicide more than younger people and now we are seeing that younger people are attempting suicide and actually committing suicide. Now it is not only relevant to Belize. It is worldwide. You see that in almost every part of the world where suicide is much higher in youth and we are seeing that in Belize and that is why we are concerned because suicide is preventable. People should not die because of suicide and I think it is an opportunity to bring teachers and counselors and health practitioners together to see what can be done to lower our numbers.” Dr. Cayetano adds that this year, in an attempt to better monitor the situation in the country, the Ministry of Health has developed an alert system. Dr. Claudina Cayetano – Director, Mental Health Program “The Ministry of Health through the epidemiology department has now started to develop this alert system so we know more or less when a suicide attempt comes into the system. We are monitoring that and it is important to start monitoring it. So, yes there is a number but the number of attempts is a bit low but it is because sometimes people don’t necessarily come to the clinics for a follow up. It is important that we can capture these people so we can provide treatment. The people who attempt suicide can attempt again and again so this number is not high; it is low and it would be good that we get them to come. Again people don’t come because of the stigma. People feel that if you suffer from depression or anxiety or if you attempt suicide or if you talk about your problems something is wrong, you are weak so they do not come to seek help. We should be seeing a bigger number because for every suicide you normally see ten attempts. For now what we are seeing are lower number of attempts but we have the number of suicide there. We want them to come to the clinics to be assessed if they have drug problems, alcohol problems, or depression – there is treatment for these types of problems.” LoveFM NOTICES
SATURDAY
-
3
SEPTEMBER
-
PHASE
TWO
OF
THE
GREAT
NORTH-ISLAND
CLEAN-UP
CAMPAIGN
!
This time we'll clean from behind Journey's End, moving south to Capricorn. ALL VOLUNTEERS ASSEMBLE behind Journey's End TIME - 8 AM Bring - gloves, mosquito spray Town Board will supply - Trucks/people & will pre-fog the area for mossies Drinking water and snacks will be provided for all volunteers Lunch arrangements to be announced. LAST WEEK WAS FANTASTIC !! Let's do it again! The
San
Pedro
High
School
PTA
Executives
is pleased to announce that the
funds raised from the Miss San Pedro High pageant have been used to
provide picnic tables and benches for the school campus. At this time
10 table/bench sets have been delivered to the school grounds and shall
be painted and sealed in time for the orientation day. The table/bench
sets were purchased from Pine Lumber at a cost of $370 each and were
delivered at no charge to the Caribbean Queen. Alex Eiley of Caribbean
Depot waived the shipping and delivery charges meaning the PTA saved
$1,500. Many thanks to Mr. Eiley and Caribbean Depot. We hope that the
tables and benches shall be utilized on a daily basis and if the need
arises more shall be installed.
Funds were used to supplement the 2010/2011 SPHS CXC program as requested by the Principal of the High School. The PTA group invites parents to join the group and/or to contact us with your concerns, suggestions and recommendations. A heartfelt depth of gratitude is made to Mrs Pamela Zetina who recently resigned from the PTA. Her enthusiasm and willingness to help in all situations shall be missed. PTA Executive members contact: Ernesto Gomez - tel: 610-2543 Flor Nunez - tel: 628-9699 Fatima Graniel - tel: 605-9738 Paulino Pineda - tel: 662-9260 Karina Morales - tel: 663-9021 Conchita Flota - tel: 631-2873 Ruby Azueta - tel: 226-2522 Amanda Syme - tel: 622 2820
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© SAN PEDRO DAILY, PO Box 45, San Pedro Town, Belize. Inquiries to Editor@SanPedroDaily.Com |
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