Reporting by Patty Wood Bartle, Edgeley Mail; Doug Card, Britton Journal; Becky Froehlich, Dakotafire Media; Bill Krikac, Clark County Courier; Garrick Moritz, Faulk County Record; Melody Owen, Tri-County News; and Laura Ptacek, Ipswich Tribune
•
• Who would answer a call for help if your neighbor, or maybe a loved one, was contemplating suicide?
• At some point in our lives, we are likely to encounter someone with suicidal intentions; it's the ninth most common cause of death in the Dakotas, and the second most common cause of death in the Dakotas among young people, according to state agencies. In 2010, 103 lives were lost to suicide in North Dakota and 139 in South Dakota.
• Those statistics have proven terribly real recently for several Dakota communities, which are still in the painful aftermath of suicides.
• The need for good mental health care is clear, but rural communities often have few resources to provide it. Mental health facilities are often many miles away, so jail cells serve as temporary safe places for suicidal individuals. Many who respond to suicidal intentions and other mental health crises say they feel inadequately trained to deal with them.
• "A threat of suicide is like domestic violence--you don't know what's going to

(Continued on page 5)