The Agora Crisis Center has a hotline that takes calls on issues like domestic violence, LGBT issues, rape and suicide.
One of the people working for the crisis center hotline is Julia Garcia, a nursing student who offers time out of her busy schedule to help others who are struggling.
"Through Agora, you do a month long training that is really intense, but only one day was focused on suicide," Garcia said. "So I did another set of training regiments to get the Suicide First Aid certification so that I could intervene in suicide cases."
Statistics show that New Mexico is ranked fourth in the nation for suicide deaths. According to Garcia, what makes this such a hot-button issue is that most people in New Mexico are not insured, which makes suicide an unwanted and unnecessary liability among taxpayers.
She said. of the reason she works in suicide intervention is because she has dealt personally with this issue.
“I have had quite a few friends, surprisingly, who have killed themselves,” she said. “I think that my involvement has made me more resilient.".
Garcia says the suicide calls come from a variety of people, including young children, UNM students, doctors, teachers - essentially some of the people a person would least expect, sometimes even during the middle of the day.
"Suicide calls are considered the most intense topics because they are very touchy and interpretive. Suicide is important, but there are so many other cases that are going on,” Garcia said.
The calls she gets are often about LGBT issues and violence among couples, families and friends, Garcia said.
“I’ve been exposed to everything. Some of the calls are super disturbing and twisted, but you build an emotional immunity to it all. You need that to be effective in helping intervene,” she said. “I used to walk around with other people’s baggage gravitating around me, but now I do not let it bother me anymore.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Garcia volunteers some of her time at a cardiology clinic as well, and was surprised that most medical providers never ask patients about suicide, depression, or troubles with their psyche, she said.
“You go in and they check your vitals, they ask personal questions about your activities, but they never ask about suicide or how you are feeling that day,” Garcia said. “Then the doctors hear the next day that their patients killed themselves, and then they think to themselves that their treatments in effect did nothing.”
Garcia wants to use her work as a student nurse and background in Agora to advocate healthcare providers to adopt policy that systematically asks patients about their mental health history and if they are suicidal, she said. She hopes that this question will be routine in a checkup, regardless of what kind of doctor you are seeing.
If they can ask about smoking, drinking, and sex, another fifteen seconds to ask about suicide is not much to ask for, Garcia said.
William Longenbaugh is a staff reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @dailylobo.
