A recent Utah Foundation breakfast event on access to mental health services and suicide prevention brought up a little good news: Utah’s suicide rate isn’t rising as fast as it has in the past two decades.
And professionals who treat those at risk for suicide say their interventions can work very well if they reach people in time. But there are still many challenges, including providing access to psychiatric care in Utah’s rural areas. In this edition of Utah Thrives, we’ll hear from Utah State Representative Steve Eliason, Dr. Morissa Henn with Intermountain Health Care and psychologist Craig Bryan of the University of Utah.
We’ll also hear from Dr. Gerald White, a psychologist and chaplain for the Utah National Guard on extending the successful SafeUT smartphone app to Guard personnel, and from Kerry Gibson, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food about reaching out to farmers and rural communities with suicide prevention efforts.
