For many people, the current COVID-19 pandemic has intensified stress levels and feelings of isolation, depression and anxiety. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these feelings are known to raise the risk for suicide. To address the potential increased risk, the Pro Bono Counseling Project is offering a free online suicide prevention training on Giving Tuesday, December 1, 2020, at 12:00 PM. The workshop will be led by Executive Director Amy Greensfelder, LMSW, and will focus on the steps anyone can learn to help prevent suicide.
“I will be teaching the QPR intervention method, which stands for Question, Persuade, and Refer,” states Greensfelder. “I highly recommend this training because it helps participants recognize who is at risk for suicide and what they can do to help.”
The QPR Gatekeeper suicide prevention training is a 90-minute course, and will teach participants how to identify the warning signs and risk factors for suicide and suicidal ideation, and then train them on how to sensitively ask if the person they are concerned about is contemplating suicide, as well as how to connect the person to appropriate resources.
Greensfelder has been certified as a QPR suicide prevention instructor since 2015 and has led more than 20 QPR Gatekeeper trainings both in-person and online. For more information on the training course, or to register, go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/qpr-gatekeeper-online-training-tickets-129352816757.
Since its founding in 1991, the Pro Bono Counseling Project (PBCP), a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, has helped over 30,000 individuals and families throughout Maryland connect with volunteer counselors and obtain the mental health care they could not otherwise afford. Presently, PBCP has over 800 volunteer clinicians all over the state of Maryland who give over 12,000 hours of their time each year.
If you’d like to support PBCP, please click here to make an online, tax-deductible gift.
