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Suicide Prevention Walk and Candlelight Devotional

Eight years ago, a student approached Oklahoma Christian University counselor Sheldon Adkins about participating in the World Suicide Prevention Day candlelight event on campus. Today, Kappa president, Jordan Santos plans to continue this legacy.

This Thursday, Sept. 10, students will have the chance to attend an awareness walk and candlelight devotional. The walk will begin at 6:30 p.m. around the Baird Loop followed by the devotional. Students are challenged to fundraise and donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

According to Santos, the money will go toward impactful programs with the potential to save lives.

“The [foundation] does a lot of work educating people around the country,” Santos said. “They go into a lot of schools, especially high schools, and work with teenagers who are struggling a lot. I would just  say let that spur you on into at least just texting your grandparents and seeing if they can get involved.”

As the president of Kappa Sigma Tau, Santos said his club was “hit pretty hard” following the death of one of their brothers last semester. 

“Once last semester got cut kind of short, we didn’t really get to have closure on the semester in general,” Santos said. “I had the idea for a walk just because I knew that’s something that a lot of people do for awareness. I knew that was something that a lot of people could participate in, low commitment, but also something that is visible and something that people can participate ineffectively.”

According to Santos, talking about suicide on campus is important as it affects people’s lives every day.

“For us and our situation there was a lot of emotion and a lot of sadness,” Santos said. “And we talked about it together, but then once we had that initial reaction we didn’t know how to talk about it after that. We didn’t know if it was appropriate, we didn’t know what feelings we were supposed to have or how to react.”

According to Adkins, suicide is a real issue on our campus just like everywhere else. 

“Sadly, too many of us are impacted by suicide through family, friends, classmates, etc.,” Adkins said. “If more people can give money and increase their own awareness about how to help people in crisis, we can do more to reduce the suicide epidemic in this country.”

Over the next several weeks Adkins said he will offer suicide prevention training to anyone on campus who would like to attend. Students can email sheldon.adkins@oc.edu for more information.

“Every one of us can help to reduce the number of suicides in our community by learning how to listen, the questions to ask and how to get someone to the help they need,” Adkins said. “Most people think they will never have a conversation about suicide with someone, but the reality is that family, friends, classmates and co-workers are usually the first person a suicidal person tells.”

During this pandemic, Santos said college-aged students should pay special attention to their mental health and the mental health of their friends.”

“Numbers go up and down throughout the year, but with coronavirus, there’s a lot of anxiety with people everywhere, especially with people that are college-aged in a transitional period trying to be independent but struggling,” Santos said. “Anxiety and different aspects of mental health are hit really hard right now. I think being willing to address something like this right now could be a positive.”

Santos said he hopes students are positively impacted after attending this event.

“I hope that people think about how they treat other people, think about loving other people actively and think about how their actions can impact people around them,” Santos said. “And also, I hope people become more aware of a problem that affects a lot of people. Whether they struggle within themselves or it’s happened with their friends, family or someone that they know.” 

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