The task force working to curb the suicide rate in Marion County meets Wednesday night to update the public, and decide on the organization’s upcoming goals.
Your Life Matters is the campaign being conducted by the Marion County Coalition for Suicide Prevention; the objective is to meet the state’s goal of reducing suicide by ten percent in 2018.
Knoxville School District Superintendent Cassi Pearson tells KNIA/KRLS News they will open with an update on what’s been done in the past few months to foster suicide prevention; then members will break into smaller discussion groups.
“We have a group that’s working on some communication pieces, we have a group working on response items in our community and putting some better things in place so we really know how to respond to crisis situations,” says Pearson. “Probably our biggest group is our prevention group, and trying to figure out specific tasks they can work around preventing suicides in Marion County and what that looks like.”
Pearson says it’s hard to measure success, since there’s no way to track how many people decided against suicide; but she notes the fact this subject is being openly discussed and dealt with is itself a measure of how much progress has been made.
The meeting will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Knoxville High School media center.