• Safety Tips:
• Community Safety: Resiliency and Community Building
• School Safety: Emergency Evacuation Drills
• Questions & Answers:
• Statistics: Suicide vs Homicide
• One Opinion: Open to Discussion

Community Safety:

Resilient children often hold the belief that their environment can be influenced by their reasonable efforts, rather than thinking that the world is random and immovable. (Werner and Smith, 1982, "Vulnerable but Invincible, A Study of Resilient Children.") In the aftermath of Sept. 11th, you or many people you know may be feeling vulnerable and perhaps more fearful because terrorists strike in ways that we cannot easily control or influence. But every small step made with awareness of strength and valued for its ability to influence our world for good may help increase a person's sense of security.

Volunteering some time to help build a stronger local community will help reduce the anxiety of facing a huge, troubling world. Contributing to a food shelter, by helping to stock or clean it, or volunteering to read at a shelter or low-income community center, or by visiting a nursing home, we each can break boundaries set by fears. When those boundaries are broken, and the full joy of sharing in our humanity is experienced, people who volunteer often feel they "get more back than they give."

In this month of Thanksgiving, give thanks for the safety and security of your community by strengthening it through a few hours of volunteering. Just pick up the phone and ask your local community center or shelter what can you stop by to do - and your whole family will emerge better. If every family did this, for even a couple hours, that would make for a lot of painted rooms, stocked shelves, and happy hearts in these times of worry.

School Safety:

If your school has not yet had a practice emergency dismissal, ask the administration when it will occur.It is helpful for faculty and students to practice early dismissal procedures in the event of a local disaster. That way parents are also alerted to what their role would be, to pick up by car or to meet an early bus drop-off. The students are made aware that there may be a reason that everyone must evacuate the school, be it a fire, a flood, or terror. Is there a nearby church building or store that you can use for the students to wait in inclement weather? If students can't get home, can they be fed? If the phone lines are down, how would parents be reached?

Just as we practice for fire drills, it is important to practice early dismissal too. A committee may be needed to fully explore the questions the arise in thinking through problem situations. Your local county emergency services may have some specialized advice.

You can also visit http://www.mhric.org/scss for more details on school safety planning.

Statistics:

• For every two victims of homicide in the U.S. there are three persons who take their own lives.
• There are now twice as many deaths due to suicide than due to HIV/AIDS.
• More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia and influenza, and chronic lung disease, combined.
• Between 1952 and 1995, the incidence of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled.

For much more information on this topic, including what you can do to prevent suicides visit: http://www.mentalhealth.org/suicideprevention/index.htm

Question from a Reader, and Our Answer:

Q. My spouse and I are in a disagreement about what our son should be taught about self-defense. I think that he should learn how to defend himself, and I want him to take martial arts. My spouse thinks we should not encourage him to believe violence can solve problem situations. What do you think?

A. This is an interesting debate that many families engage in. We believe that if a child is taught he or she cannot fight back, for ethical reasons that is can undermine their ability to protect him or herself. However, we also believe that children should be taught negotiating skills to verbally de-escalate a problem whenever possible. But there may, unfortunately, come a time when reasonableness does not adequate protect oneself from becoming a victim. In those cases, self-defense skills, like martial arts training, may be valuable. Even just believing that it is possible and necessary to fight off an attacker can give someone the courage to act rather than submit.

For further reading, see the special report "Self Defense for Children" by Tenna Perry, viewed through the website "Victor Not Victim" : please visit:http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/7793/74814 (This site has a lot of child sexual abuse content.)

One Opinion, Open for Discussion:

I am not sure just what changed Sept. 11th. We were surprised that anyone would attack us, yet in other nations terrorism is part of every day life. We were taken off guard, because we took our freedom and our safety for granted. We paused long enough to realize how valuable those people brave enough to protect our lives are to us. The question is, can they do it alone?

When I consider that approximately 42,000 people are killed in traffic accidents yearly, I am terrified. 39% of those killed are involved in alcohol related accidents. The prospect of drinking and driving should be terrifying; just driving is a risk, yet is one we have all learned to cope with. Yet, based on fear of terrorism, many people are turning to alcohol to cope with their anxiety. There are counseling services available for those feeling the ripples of trauma - and we can expect that many emergency response workers will need to seek help because no one should go through the anxiety alone.

We need to take better care of ourselves, and our friends - use our hearts and our heads. We need to realize that when the Red Cross says they need monthly blood donors, they are asking US. We need to notice the signs in front of the fire stations, and YOU and I need to respond to their call for volunteers, even if it requires our time and effort to be trained as an EMS worker. In recent weeks, we have learned the importance of sharing our gifts - whether it is simply to reach out to a housebound neighbor, or reading to someone who can't. When we work together, we are stronger, and that shouldn't surprise anyone.

If you know a firefigher, police officer, or other emergency response person who has been suffering, check out the information on http://www.ncptsd.org/. You just may find a way to help them out.

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