Laura Kunstleben is a facilitator of the Central MN Suicide Prevention Coalition, which is a group with a pretty lofty goal: ending suicide. I wrote an article back in October about resources for individuals considering suicide, but I don’t think I gave CMSPC, or Laura, nearly as much credit as they are due.

Laura has been working for the VA for about 13 years. She’s been taking care of the veterans who did their part to keep our country safe and free. One of the biggest challenges facing veterans is their higher rate of suicides. Veterans die by suicide at 1.5 times the rate of non-vets. It’s truly sad that so many of the men and women who served our country turn to suicide.

It can be hard for vets to reintegrate into life at home after deployment. The lives of their friends and family went on without them, and the jobs they come back to are often not as challenging as what they’d become used to.

However, many times veterans, and others considering suicide, don’t necessarily reach out to resources that are available to them, such as the VA. So it’s important to CMSPC to help educate the community about suicide prevention, in order to reach those who are in crisis (or, even better, reach individuals before they are in crisis) right where they are: at their workplaces, schools, churches, and other community gathering places.

Of course, CMSPC is not concerned only with ending veteran suicides. Laura and her organization hope to end all suicides. Laura recalled the suicide of a work friend some time ago, before she started forming the coalition.

“I’d had contact with her the day before she died,” Laura told me. “She left behind some young kids, too.”

But it can be hard to see all the signs, and to put it all together. But with better education within the community, everyone can do a little better with getting help to the people who need it.

“Most people who are in crisis can usually get through it after a few days, or even a few hours,” Laura said.

The community can help to step in and take care of those individuals in crisis. This can take the form of safely storing firearms or medicine from a person experiencing a suicidal crisis. This scares people, but Laura emphasizes that the removal is not permanent.

“If you see a person who is too drunk to drive, you take away their car keys,” Laura told me, as an example. “But they can come and pick up their vehicle the next day. It’s the same with firearms or bottles of medicine. It’s not taken away permanently.”

For more information on how to help people in the community struggling with suicidal thoughts, community organizations can reach out to Laura and CMSPC at Laura.Kunstleben@VA.gov. I hope many of you will reach out to her, or look into ways to help your friends, family, and coworkers in crisis. It may well be a lofty goal, but suicide is the most preventable type of death, and we can all help to end it in our community.