The Crisis Centre provides educational workshops aimed at building suicide-safer communities.  Our training includes skills training, healthy coping, communication, peer support, and education to prevent and respond to crisis and suicide.

We collaborate with and support agencies, front-line workers, social workers, first responders, education providers, industries, and the general public to develop an approach to suicide prevention.

Crisis Centre Youth Workshops

COPE (Offered in person or over Zoom):

COPE uses the principles of mindfulness to help students in grades 5, 6, & 7 achieve better mental wellness and cope with issues like anxiety, overthinking, stress, sleep loss, self-harm, bullying, and social media use – all things that research tells us can contribute to mental health struggles and suicide ideation.

COPE will be taught in 4, 60-minute sessions and will cover:

Communication: Talking with a safe adult about our struggles or the things we worry about helps us COPE. What does it mean to COPE? Becoming aware of how we speak to ourselves and the ways we think about ourselves can teach us how to be our own best friend. How to communicate our feelings through art/poetry/journaling/culture. What it means to have someone listen. What a safe adult is. What it would look like if they called, chatted with, or texted the crisis line.

Options: What are options? What does it mean to have options? Exploring internal and external options. Mindfulness, self-care, self-compassion.

Perspective: Tools for handling overthinking, worry, and anxiety. Helping students learn how to put things back into perspective for themselves and see the gifts in difficult times. Helping learners understand their own strength and resilience.

Enjoy Life: Learning about balance and finding a sense of calm or peacefulness even when we are going through a hard time. Creating intentional happiness and exploring gratitude. Students will identify things that contribute to their personal happiness.

Lifelines

Lifelines is an evidence-based program for students in grades 5,6, & 7 designed to integrate youth suicide prevention into the school’s culture and mission, which is to provide a safe learning environment for its students. Classes emphasize help-seeking behaviours and are aimed at students who encounter peers who may be thinking of suicide.

Objectives of the workshop:

• To review relevant facts about suicide, including warning signs;
• To outline how to recognize signs of suicide thoughts and/or behaviour and to take peers seriously;
• To model positive attitudes about intervention and help-seeking behaviours;
• To identify resources, including one helpful adult, and to know how resources will respond.

Lifelines will be taught in 4, 60-minute sessions and will cover:

Session 1 – Suicide Isn’t Silly: Children (and adults) have a tendency to make fun of things that frighten or scare them. This first session sets the foundation for continuing classroom discussions of suicide by acknowledging the anxiety that may come with these lessons. Basic information about suicide is reviewed by engaging the students in discussion and by clarifying myths and misinformation.

Session 2 – Friends Help Friends: The second session begins to present the dilemma of knowing something is not right with a friend but not knowing what to do about it. Focusing on helping a friend rather than going for help for oneself is designed to open up the topic of help-seeking in a non-threatening way.

Session 3 – Asking for Help Takes Courage: Builds on the theme of help-seeking behaviours and redefines asking for help as a character strength rather than a weakness. Participants also identify caring behaviours and the characteristics of helpful people.

Session 4 – Practicing What We’ve Learned: Video scenes presented acknowledge that asking for help for a friend might not be easy but demonstrate the benefits of doing so. The session concludes by asking participants to sign a help-seeking pledge and name at least one trusted adult.

Self-Care 101 (Offered in person or over Zoom):

60-minute workshop about mental health awareness and coping for Grades 8-12.

A central goal of this workshop is to invite youth to see that each of us has mental health and, similar to caring for our physical health, we can learn to nurture and improve our mental health through our actions, experiences, and lifestyle choices.

Objectives of the workshop:

• Explore what mental health is;
• Understand mental health is a dynamic part of well-being that exists on a spectrum;
• Normalize mental health as similar to physical health: it can improve or decline, requires maintenance, and sometimes requires professional or outside help;
• Brainstorm actions we can take to support our mental health called ‘self-care strategies’;
• Understand doing self-care effectively requires taking time for self, is not selfish, and gets easier with experience and practice;
• Understand that all self-care strategies have potential limitations: why and how much we do something can make it supportive or limiting;
• Validate and normalize reaching out to safe, trusted adults and community resources for outside support for ourselves or our friends or loved ones.

Reaching Out (Offered in person or over Zoom):

60-minute workshop about suicide awareness for Grades 8-12

This workshop introduces the topic of suicide to youth and discusses the basics of warning signs, how to ask someone about suicide, and talk to someone who is thinking about suicide.

Objectives of the workshops:

• Ensure participants learn information about suicide and reducing pain;
• Teach and discuss warning signs prior to a suicide or an attempt;
• Teach participants ways they can respond to someone who is thinking about suicide; and that it is okay to talk about suicide;
• Teach about the resources available and let participants know that it is okay to ask for and give help by connecting students with thoughts of suicide to a trusted adult.

GRASP

12-hour skill-building program that provides youth from grades 9 to 12 with self-awareness, communication, and coping skills that will aid them in their personal and professional growth, as well as contribute to an overall plan for ongoing youth suicide prevention programs.

Student Curriculum: GRASP stands for Growth, Resilience, Acknowledgement, Suicide Awareness, Preparation and Safe Planning, or, Getting Real About Suicide Prevention

Lesson 1: Listening, acknowledging, and validating (Growth)

Lesson 2: Tools for coping, finding our strengths, tools for helping others (Growth, Resilience)

Lesson 3: Healthy and unhealthy behaviors, how and when to set a boundary, introduction to suicide prevention (Resilience, Acknowledgement, Suicide Awareness)

Lesson 4: Suicide Prevention, community resources, crisis line and school Counselling, helping peers who are struggling, coping cards and safe planning (Suicide Awareness, Preparation, and Safe Planning)

Young people often turn to their peers rather than an adult in times of difficulty. GRASP was developed as a Peer Gatekeeper training program to provide youth with the skills needed to recognize and identify students who are struggling and where they can turn to for help.

GRASP was designed to boost self-confidence, problem-solving, community resource knowledge, knowledge of school district protocols, critical thinking, awareness of personal biases, resilience, suicide awareness and response in students selected to take the program.

Through a series of games, interactive discussion, group activity, written work, and role play, youth learn:

• Active listening skills
• The impact of social and cultural biases on listening and helping
• Why difficult situations can be turning points for the better
• The power of our choices
• How to respectfully communicate in an open and direct manner
• The differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships
• How to recognize manipulation
• When to set boundaries
• How to set boundaries
• Coping with crisis
• Suicide awareness, the importance of reaching out, and never keeping suicide a secret
• Community resource information.