Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 26: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted - An unscripted discussion about grief and hope with Teri Geier.
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Welcome to Arizona Unscripted. I'm your host, Bart, alongside my wonderful co-hosts Catherine and Jim. From time to time we'll be joined by special pop-in guests and other co-hosts from communities all across the Grand Canyon state. Arizona Unscripted is all about Arizona, its people, its places, its events, and the local issues that shape our everyday lives. So from small towns to big cities, from hidden gems and great local food to history, culture, and the challenges facing our communities. We're here to have real conversations with real Arizonans. Our goal is simple, to celebrate what makes Arizona unique while bringing together voices from every corner of our state. So whether you're a lifelong resident, a newcomer, or just someone who loves Arizona, we hope you'll feel right at home. So grab a cup of coffee or something cool, sit back and join us as we explore the people, places, and stories that make Arizona one of the greatest states in America. Welcome to Arizona Unscripted. And with that, I'll pass this over to my Wonderful co-host Catherine. Hey Bart. Nice to see you. I see you too. And and Speaking to you today from Dolores, Colorado, up here in the cool country. ⁓ you left you left us? Just temporarily. Just temporarily. ⁓ we had a golf clinic for my ⁓ camp abilities for corners over in Farmington this weekend, and it was just a huge, huge success. So yeah, it was really fun, and it's nice to be up here in the cool country and we're getting rain. So ⁓ happy happy to be on here today. How are you doing, Jim? I'm doing great. They say they got some rain down in Havasu while you were gone. Wouldn't she know it. I leave and it rains. I know there's flooding going on right in the Grand Canyon, right? Or something. ⁓ yeah. Wow. There's thirteen people missing and one person dead already. ⁓ my gosh, that's crazy. Well that's not a good place to be in when it's raining. Not a good time to plan a hike into a canyon during the Yeah, I heard it was like an hour, like a ⁓ was it a foot of rain in one hour or something or something something like maybe faster than that. It was really a lot. Well, flash floods are a real danger in canyons this time of year in any in the southwest. So t a t you guys everybody try to avoid canyons during rainstorms and lightning storms. ⁓ Well today We have a special guest. I am so happy to welcome ⁓ Terry Geyer. ⁓ I've known Terry for about ten years. She is a licensed clinical social worker and has been for 50 years, and for the past ten years she has been volunteering her services at the Havasu Community Health Foundation ⁓ for suicide counseling. The reason that I have Terry to come on today is because recently in Lake Kavasu City we had a 13-year-old child who jumped off our London bridge and ⁓ did eventually pass away and it really affected our community. ⁓ and I think whenever something like that happens, you know, people in the community it just kind of takes you back. So ⁓ I invited Terry to come here today and talk to us. about what she does and grief after suicide and just answer questions that we might have. So welcome Terry. Thank you for being here today. Well ⁓ first of all thank you for having me. As of tomorrow, it's Suicide Month awareness and prevention. So this couldn't have been more timely and especially with not only the the suicide of the child that ⁓ jumped off the bridge, but right before that we also had a murder suicide. And a lot of times we don't adopt acknowledge the suicide part when there's a murder suicide, but it's still a suicide. ⁓ and I think that is a lot in one week or so or week and a half for our community. So thanks for having me. Yeah, it is. And I think you're right. I never thought about that. But murder suicide kind of all we hear is murder. We we kind of discount the suicide. For one thing, he already killed somebody, right? So we're you know, we think less of him that person whoever did it. So wow, never thought of it that way, Terry. Yeah, my gosh. ⁓ my gosh. So when I it's a mental problem for sure, you know. It is. So Terry, when I was working ⁓ in healthcare for many years. I learned the five stages of grieving, which I think many of us did from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. And so my question to you is do those how do those stages of grieving relate to grieving after suicide? Well, I think I I think the the whole thing about grieving when there's a suicide is a little different than even grieving if someone just passed away either because they had a heart attack or maybe they you know had some kind of other illness or they were elderly and just passed quietly into the good night because with suicide the concern always is the guilt that's left with the survivors. ⁓ you know the whole thing the questions of ⁓ my god how How did I not know? What could I have done? I tried a hundred things, nothing worked, you know, what was wrong with me? I think survivors, and this happens in the community, but at different, you know, there's different d volumes of how this impacts ⁓ people or organizations or the community, but it's the shock of it. And it's the shock that is. It defies logic for us in our head. You know, we have life and most of us are busy trying to live life. And then all of a sudden somebody says they don't want to live anymore. And it's hard to wrap our head around how does somebody decide to do that and then complete their death by suicide. So the the grieving I think is much more intense. I think it has less ⁓ understanding of why it happened. Usually people can, well, yeah, they had heart issues. Yeah, you know, we knew this was going on. But this oftentimes suicide, believe it or not, comes out of the blue for most people. And so they don't have even an understanding of why it happened. And therefore you're not necessarily going to have closure like you do with with some other deaths. ⁓ In fact, I believe basically and I I wanted to kind of go through this because there's a cycle that happens when somebody that's suicidal what goes on with them and when they ⁓ sui ⁓ you know commit ⁓ death by suicide, the the people left behind also go through the same cycle. And so it's a little different than just a normal Yeah, I'd love to hear the differences. Well, part of part of it is just sort of a understanding of what is the definition of suicide. And I think that's important to understand that it's a progressiveness generally. There are warning signs. Some are very noticeable, some are are not, but it's exhaustion over time for the most part. Every once in a while you'll have comp impulsive. suicide where somebody hears something or some tragedy happens and so they want to join, you know, the other person and that sort of thing. But for the most part, it's exhaustion and there's depression underneath it. So grief, yes, grief you always have denial. And I think that happens with suicide. And then you have the depression, but the depression is often there ⁓ Before anybody even realizes the person might be having thoughts of suicide. ⁓ the highest risk times, and I think this is critical too, because it's like, well, how do you know? You know, they don't say something, how do you know? And this is across the board. It's anytime somebody goes through a transition in your life, and everybody that's on here, we've gone through a couple, right? Yeah, let's say it's And transition means, you know, like schools change, friends leave, ⁓ job changes, job loss, loss of relationships, divorce, ⁓ health, major health issues, the cancer strokes and accidents are the three highest health issues that create suicide thoughts and ⁓ possible ⁓ choice to to choose to die by suicide. Mental health. The if you're bipolar, if you have depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, those two are more high-risk diseases mentally that create it. And so, ⁓ you know, there already is some extra struggles that the person may be having in addition before the suicide happens. And suicide too, you have suicide ideation, you know, just it kind of floats through the head sometimes, sometimes it might stay there. You have suicide planning. This is where the person's thinking, okay, I can't handle this anymore. I'm gonna ⁓ do I have a knife? Do I have a gun? Do I have you know ammunition? The more the person has thought about it, the more detailed the plan. The more likely that they are going to be at increased risk to actually complete a suicide. So there's a warning sign in knowing how to ask people, which I'll get to. Suicide attempts, but they don't die. That's another level where they may be marking on themselves, they may be cutting, they may be taking overdoses, they may be trying to shoot themselves. They maybe tried to hang themselves, but it didn't happen. And so that to me is another place where society and agencies and communities could maybe do a little better job of hey, something's not right here. And then you have the death by suicide. Statistically, this is so scary to me, but statistically, all we ever figure out for the most part. is who's actually completed death by suicide. We don't have the numbers for who thinks about it, who's maybe got a plan, who's actually tried it and succeeded. And so ⁓ that just makes the whole thing even even crazier to me. we have approximately I I when I was doing this too, I just think people have no clue how massive a situation ⁓ suicide really is because it's so quiet. It's so back in the corner. Even when somebody commits it, you see it on the news for what, a day? And then everything's silent. With this situation in Havasu, we've got some memorial going on, but I'm pretty sure at some point that'll be cleaned off and that'll be the end of that. And that's partly why it continues because there isn't the ⁓ There's so much shame and guilt and the survivors taking responsibility for who may have chosen to to you know die by suicide that everybody puts it under under the rug. And just one of those things people don't want to talk about. Well nobody wants to talk about it. They don't even know. It and it's b it is. It's probably the biggest reason it keeps happening. You know, one of the myths is, ⁓ you can't, and this is for kids or adults, you can't tell them. You can't you can't ask them that question. And the whole thing is, these people, when they get to this point, they're exhausted. Yeah. They feel lonely. They feel like nobody understands them. Nobody cares about them. I don't care how many times they hear, see, got letters. This is what they feel inside because they're so exhausted. And so it is so critical. That we say to them, you know, I don't know if you're gonna like me asking this, but I'm gonna ask it because I care about you. Are you feeling suicidal? And you use the word, not are you yes, because I'm gonna tell you, I mean, I've done this. I work with teens, I worked with adults, I work with drug and alcohol, I work with prisoners, I've worked in in the hospitals, I've been all over the place, different and hospice, which was for elderly. And the best thing you can do is just call a spade a spade to them because that is what they're waiting for. Is somebody gonna notice? Actually acknowledge what's going on. Yes. And so that to me is how do you help people not be afraid to ask? And it's in the not asking, you know, a lot of people say, Well, ⁓ if I ask, they'll get mad at me. Well, they might, so preface it. I'm gonna ask you something. You might get mad at me, but I'm gonna ask it anyway because I care about you. Yeah. Okay. This is what I'm noticing. And in that way, you're giving them a heads up that it's okay if they're upset with you, but that's not the concern. Because in not asking, they're more likely going to do it. And so they're gonna die more likely because you didn't ask it head on than if you did. And so what if they're mad at you? They're alive. I don't care. I mean, I had kids that did all kinds of stuff and boy, they hated my guts, and they'd tell everybody, you know, a different name than what I was supposed to be. And I said I'd say to them, you know what, it's okay because you're alive and you've decided that you finally figured something else out besides just ⁓ trying to do something. You know, we do we have such an epidemic. You've got kids ages ⁓ eight to twelve. It's the fifth leading cause of Death for kids age eight to twelve. Think about that. Wow. The fifth leading cause? Yes, leading cause of death. There's been a hundred and ninety-four kids ⁓ that have committed suicide in two by twenty twenty-five up from two thousand eight. That's a lot of kids that are committing suicide. If they're autistic or Asperger's, they have a one in three chance they're going to think about suicide. And 15 to 25% of those kids attempt suicide. You've got kids, you know, the middle group ⁓ kids, the average age of suicide is 34 years old, and it's usually a male. ⁓ you know, you've got adults and elderly too. It's either Age 34 is the highest risk, or males 75 and over. ⁓ you know, people don't realize in hospice I had more than my share of patients, even with precautions, even with suicide plans that figured out how to kill themselves anyway, because they didn't want to await for scope of their death. ⁓ Can I ask you a question? Yeah, go ahead. So why why do you think it is? You're the you're the expert. Why do you think it is that it's more a male thing, especially in the older years, than something women do? I don't know if I read anything quite about that. I think men are less likely to want to get help. And so, or I and I'll take care of it. Most suicide by mail are guns or hanging, those two. So again, that's kind of fits that. Where women tend to do asphyxiation, ⁓ like they get in the car with the gas, or they ⁓ sh slip their wrists. Or they take overdose of medication. So women are more quiet about it. Men are kind of got a little more, I I don't want to say drama. Drama. Yes. Yes. Yes. ⁓ and part of it that what I found interesting, I had been at a workshop. ⁓ and and part of part of what they have discovered, and I find it fascinating, it's kind of new, is that they've actually done research to show that the brain When somebody has exhaustion, when somebody has depression over time, and nothing seems to do so that whole cycle of kind of going into I don't feel like I can live anymore, there's nothing I'm doing that's helping, I'm feeling helpless, and I've tried a hundred things, the brain itself actually changes. They've been able to show that. And what the brain does is it creates a problem with impulse control. It changes the brain in such a way they become more impulsive. And their ability to have common sense or to slow down decision making ⁓ is changed. So that's partly why they're now saying that actually suicide, and this is a new new thing. And I think I go, Amen, but how are we going to get this out there? Suicide is the number one ⁓ medical, not. mental health medical ⁓ problem in our society. And it's because they have discovered that the as the brain changes, it increases the risk for suicide. And and and what makes the brain change? Just the exhaustion? Yes, yes, yes. Not sleeping, because they usually when you start in this cycle, you've got depri you know, you start getting, I call it down in the dumps. And pretty soon it changes your eating habits, it changes your ⁓ sleeping habits, it changes ⁓ your socializations, not wanting to be around people. You start to see the withdrawal. Eating disorders usually come with this too. So all of that biological change is also causing problems with your brain, you know. Right. And so it's so people are calling it a They look at suicide as a mental health crisis, but you're saying that we're s people are starting to look at it more like actually a medical crisis. It actually is. And and their treatment for it too is interesting because they they say we have been treating it wrongly on the other end. We should be talking about suicide like we do to somebody whose spouse died of a heart attack, somebody who has a stroke. And we usually say, How ⁓ I heard about so and so. We use their name and you know, how are they doing? How are you doing? But with suicide, it's like nobody even knows if they should say anything. ⁓ your passed away, your loved one died. And I thought, you know, this this is partly why we in we feed the shame and the guilt and that sense of you're responsible for why they they didn't make it. And I I feel this very strongly. Nobody controls another person. It doesn't matter how much you care about them. It doesn't matter what you do for them. It doesn't matter how you educate them. It doesn't matter how many times you're with them. It doesn't matter how many times you hug them. If they're going to do it, it they're one probably not going to tell you at the time that they decide to do it. They're going to say everything is fine. And you're going to wanna believe it, because why do you want to believe the other? And they're going to quietly do it in hopes that nobody catches them. I see that as the standard care with kids, with adults, with the hospice patients. It was like some of them would talk about it. They'd give you details. We do all the safety stuff, and that was for kids or adults. Drug and alcohol, too. Lots of suicidal ideation with drug and alcohol. Today's drug and alcohol day or something, too. So I thought that was kind of interesting. But hey, ⁓ Terry. Yeah. Terry. Hi, this is Jonah Durman. Yeah, hi, Joni. Hi. ⁓ I just have a question. What what are you seeing ⁓ in the way of ⁓ changes in treatment and and approaching the subject here in our area? Do you ha has there been any change? I I know I know about the veteran community, ⁓ and there has been an improvement in that in that ⁓ in the last ⁓ few years. So just I was just curious. Well, I think the veterans community has done a really good job of trying to close the gap between, okay, we know somebody's in trouble and they need help and they need help now, not in two weeks, not in six weeks, not three days from now, but like right now, where do they get help? ⁓ there is a crisis team that ⁓ is connected, you know, the national connection is 988 and then they can hook up with the crisis team here. But I've I have a a client that actually I had seen for over a year weekly because he was so suicidal. He was 27 years old. He was so suicidal. And all I could do is I thought, I'm going to show up next week. Are you going to be here? And I wouldn't leave till he told me he was going to be there. And so we at least he was there every week. But I couldn't get him off dead center. His parents couldn't get him off dead center. It didn't matter what we did. It took a year and a crisis. And several times had we had a better system in the ER for bringing someone into the hospital and then having somebody not only there, but we could have some beds. Keep these people a couple days because again. their brains are not working right. And it takes only it only takes a few hours to get somebody's brain back into a better spot if you can hold them and be with them for that time. That's the that's the sad part. And so it took a year. And finally, the dad said, I can't manage this anymore. I said, I can't promise you if we you call that they're even gonna take him in. And we knew that that would just escalate. That would be just one more thing that didn't work for it. So it was scary and it was risk taking, and it wasn't something you just do. And so finally it reached a point where thank God he was able to go to the hospital, and they end up putting him in an inpatient. unit in Phoenix and that was a miracle. We had talked about that for nine nine months. It shouldn't have taken nine months. This kid was in such bad shape, self-abusing, hurting himself. I mean it was well it sounds like that's one area of healthcare that could really use ⁓ some revamping and some resources and some people with this new idea about looking at it in a different way. We well, I I'll tell you what I really think and and Joni with ⁓ veterans, I think they've done a much better job. But in this community, and because I worked in another state that I would say had their act together better about mental health and the laws around it, we don't have the right laws in place. So that's a political thing. The second thing is we don't I don't feel this that as a city that or a county that we work together at all. We've got the mental health agencies, they're over here. They have their little hours and ever you know who's on call. And then you have the police and they have their rules and that that's over here. And then you have the hospital, the ER. And most of the time nobody even knows what to do in the ER with suicidal patients. There were patients in hospice. I sat for eight, nine hours by myself with somebody highly suicidal and combative and tried to manage that by myself because nobody else knew what to do. Nobody else wanted to deal with it. And yet that patient was a danger to themselves and others if somebody wasn't sitting there. Thank God, you know, I had had enough years I kinda figured I'd figure it out how to deal with it. But if I was one you know, no, I mean it was I was flying by the seat of my pants and my brain, you know, what do I do next? You know? Yeah. That was wrong. It was wrong. And and this happens all the time. Our elderly too, you know, with hospice and stuff, places where we we had several of them that have dementia and they're suicidal. Think about it. You can't reason with them. Right. We had one that wandered out of the Palladori house that was with the hospice house back in the day. And we ended up sit he was out in the middle of the street with trucks coming and stuff. It took us an hour, two nurses and myself an hour to get him to get them back. And we finally found out he liked cupcakes. So we got cupcakes. So we f we almost fed him back to the The house and he needed to be in an inpatient psychiatric unit for ⁓ medication management because it was so crazy. We never got him there. It was two weeks of hell and he finally passed away. There's no reason any agency, anybody isn't working together and create a system. Okay, if this happens, here's who we call, this is what we do, here's where we can put beds. You know, our hospital, and this is another this is money, this is about money. Well, I want to talk a little bit about that because this is a high-risk ⁓ economic mess. But our hospital, I said to them, this was years ago, I said, we need ⁓ we need a couple beds for psychiatric patients. And I said, we need a psychiatrist that can come in, not just a clinical social worker, we're able to do it, but some of these are a little higher level with medication. We need a psychiatrist to come in and re-look at these meds. And see what's needed and help us get the person from A to B. And you know what the answer was? ⁓ we can't afford to have them come for that. Right. Right. Okay, so let me find the cost. I looked that up too, which is just crazy. It costs five hundred and ten billion dollars annually to deal with the cost of a suicide and emergency treatment. Five hundred and ten billion dollars. In the United States, four hundred and eighty four billion dollars a year is the total economic burden. In medical costs, it's thirteen billion dollars a year at costs because we don't have the right setup. Ten billion for quality of life and three three here's the other issue with suicide. Lost work production, over three billion. And what do how many workplaces have a policy on suicide and how to treat that in the workplace that the if the employee does commit? I worked in mental health, you see suicides a lot more. So I have had several peers and doctors I work with that committed suicide. But you all, you know, it it's it's it's the impact on that those left, but also just the whole the whole idea that some of you work with. has committed suicide and nobody talks about it. I'm gonna tell you, had one that killed herself on the weekend. They cleared out her office on Monday and had somebody else in her office on Tuesday and there was and this is a mental health agency and nobody was supposed to talk about ⁓ my gosh. Well Terry, your passion for this subject is really evident. And I'm kind of getting the idea of maybe a mental health a suicide commission. And you would be my first choice for it, for sure. Unfortunately, we've got to wrap this up for today, but I wanna thank you so much for coming on. And it's a lot of good information. Yeah, well, that's what it's supposed to do. Get you thinking about it. And you can you can go online and they have YouTubes about some of this, you know, you just put in suicide. different age groups, whatever you want, but I think that's part of my passion is you gotta understand how big a mess this is. And so that it'd be easier if we all got together and figured something out. It would be. Well well ⁓ on that note, ⁓ we may mention this to ⁓ the next guest we have who is ⁓ possibly going to be in a position to maybe do something about that. So Terry thank you. Thank you so much for coming on today. We really appreciate your time and your expertise. Thank you, Terry. Wow, what an eye opening or good. ⁓ that makes me happy. All right, everybody. All right. Thank you.