The Hope Squad of Carbon and Emery Counties for suicide prevention would like you to know that often those who take their lives are at that moment feeling hopeless and facing many issues. It is these folks who are most vulnerable and often stigmatize in communities where we live so that they don’t reach out and get the help that they need. This help can save lives and spare families the immense pain and suffering that comes with losing a loved one to suicide.
We would like to applaud the Sun Advocate for helping our community reduce the stigmatizing of mental health by eliminating the public shaming that is associated with a vulnerable population. By removing the public jail bookings that often creates this public shaming and affects the most defenseless in our community. We realize that the public does have a right to know but it’s interesting in a social context that we also have the right to know about bankruptcies, divorces, and public employee salaries, yet we don’t seek out this information in an insatiable way. Is it perhaps because we don’t want to embarrass these people?
As the Chair of the Hope Squad of Carbon and Emery Counties, I thank the Sun Advocate for the bold progressive and innovative step to stop stigmatizing mental health and reduce the public shaming that is associated with a high-risk population. We believe that our citizens in Carbon and Emery Counties care about each other, even when one is struggling. That they care about what makes each one of our families healthy and happy, and they surely would support any efforts even at the risk of the right to know to reduce the risk associated with suicide.
—Debbie Marvidikis, Price
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