Suicide Prevention & Mental Health, with Aisha T. McDonald, LMHC | EDB 329
Certified Trauma and Resiliency Expert Aisha T. McDonald, LMHC returned to discuss her work as a Suicidologist. and the importance of inclusive mental health.
Aisha T. McDonald, LMHC is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Trauma and Resiliency Expert. She has worked in the social services field for over 12 years in a variety of capacities ranging from advocacy, direct service, and macro-focused positions. She is also a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging expert who aims to address the systemic barriers to equity in our community. Throughout her varied roles, Aisha has worked with marginalized populations within South Florida specifically those with severe and persistent mental illness, the forensic population in the criminal justice system and those incarcerated in local jail facilities, individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, youth in the welfare system and those in the department of juvenile justice, and individuals who are involuntarily hospitalized under Florida’s Baker Act and Marchman Act laws.
She currently works for United Way of Broward County as the Director of Training Initiatives where she facilitates and moderates community-wide trainings and professional development workshops focused on mental health awareness and education, racial and cultural trauma, substance use issues, as well as diversity, inclusion and social equity. Aisha also serves as a Suicidologist for the American Association of Suicidology where she conducts Psychological Autopsy trainings for national and international groups. She has worked with FAU Sandler School of Social Work for a number of years to offer professional development workshops such as these in order to enhance professional and clinical skills for our community agencies and providers.
For more information about the United Way of Broward County: unitedwaybroward.org
For more about American Association of Suicidology: suicidology.org
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.
HACKIE REITMAN, MD (HR):
Hi, I’m Dr Harold Reitman. Welcome to another episode of Exploring Different Brains, and today we welcome back Aisha McDonald of the United Way of Broward, who is a suicidologist and mental health expert, and so much more. Aisha, welcome back.
AISHA McDONALD, LMHC (AM):
Thank you. You know, I love having conversations with you, and so I’m oftentimes so grateful when people are willing to continue having these like very important and very impactful discussion. So thank you.
HR:
Well, welcome back. Why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience.
AM:
All over again? No problem. So once again, my name is Aisha McDonald. I spent the majority of my career as a licensed mental health counselor doing direct service work and doing therapy and working with individuals who had mental health needs, and now I have re channeled my efforts and energy into trying to work at a more macro level and just helping the professionals better their skills at working with the individuals.
HR:
Let’s talk specifically a bit about suicidologists, of which you are a suicidologist. What is a suicidologist?
AM:
I get that a lot, a question I’ve been asked, and I’m still working on having a concrete answer, but I’ll give you the basic premise of it is somebody who works in the field of suicide, somebody who has studied suicide, researched suicide, or works some to strategically change the suicide prevention as a whole. And so the work that I specifically do has been very focused on our suicide prevention efforts, both here in my local community, and I also work with a national organization on Suicidology and addressing and just the increase in of knowledge and enhancing skills for professionals overall, in being able to address suicide.
HR:
And that’s the American Association of Suicidology?
AM:
Yes, yes. I work with them as my side job to my day job, but I do a lot of focus with and there’s even been some international organizations that I’ve worked with through them to address what their suicide prevention efforts already are. How do they study the suicide deaths that has happened in their community? How are we looking at the data and making sure that based on what the data tells us, we’re catering our efforts to the needs of the people that are being impacted. And how can we, one day, hopefully fingers crossed, move to having communities that have zero suicides overall.
HR:
What is the single thing that you would like to communicate to people that they might not know about suicide?
AM:
That’s a very good question, and I’ll answer this question not just from a professional level, but from a personal level too. As a suicide loss survivor, I’ve lost a family member to suicide. I’ve also had other family members past and current who have active suicide ideations, and you just keep hoping fingers crossed that they make it day to day, right? I think for me, one of the things that gets misunderstood and oftentimes misconstrued in conversations is the idea that people who make these attempts on their lives or completions are selfish. They’re only thinking about themselves, and why aren’t they thinking about the rest of us and how this impacts us? And I’ve tried to explain as much as I can to others that for a lot of them, they’re not really thinking very selfishly. In fact, for them, it’s a selfless act. It’s the thought of the fact that they’re going through whatever struggles and whatever pain that they’ve been impacted by, or dealing with, whatever trauma they may have experienced, and thinking of trying to stop that pain in any way that they can. And unfortunately, suicide is a solution to stop in the pain. It’s not the best solution, but it’s a solution for them in their particular circumstances, and for a lot of them, they’re thinking that people’s lives will actually become better without them being here anymore. They won’t have to deal with me and my mental health issues. I won’t. Be a financial burden to my family, I won’t be an emotional burden to my family, and people’s lives will be more complete if they no longer have to worry about me and my circumstances.
HR:
So some would say we have a suicide epidemic in the United States. Would you agree with that? What do you think is causing it? In general? I
AM:
I think for me, I would agree that there’s an epidemic of suicide globally, not just here in the United States. We have some unique factors that contribute to our suicide. Our method of suicide is unique to the United States and very much an American cultural experience. Because the primary method is through firearms, and we know that one of the best prevention strategies for suicide is limiting access to the method that people will use. And unfortunately, when we talk about that in our country, the idea of limiting access to firearms becomes a political debate when it’s a human rights issue and a safety issue. Most of all, and I’m not saying in any shape or form, whether or not I agree or disagree with the Second Amendment, I think it’s there. It’s there for a reason, but I think when we’re talking particularly about individuals that are vulnerable or at risk of suicide, the concept of limiting their access to the method that can take their lives is important when we’re thinking about overall safety, another thing that I think contributes to our increased numbers is we’ve had some really hard years as a country. We’ve been struggling for a really, really long time. There’s been trauma events after trauma event. Covid, the pandemic, was a huge global trauma that impacted all of us in some way, and I don’t know if enough focus is being given to how we treat mental health and what people are going through. How do we fund the programs where people can get support and help and assistance from rather than suppressing these things and continuing with the status quo as if nothing is wrong.
HR:
So if somebody in our audience has a loved one who has expressed suicidal thoughts, what should they do?
AM:
Don’t treat the topic as if it’s taboo. A lot of people hear the S word and they panic. I had a parent one time who told me, Don’t talk to my kids about the S word. And I was like, What is this S word? What s word are you talking about? And she couldn’t even, she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word suicide. She whispered it if it came out her mouth, and I had a conversation with her about it, and about the fact that by the time somebody opens up and even says that word, these thoughts have probably been in their head for such a long time, and they’re probably so fearful of even expressing these thoughts because of the stigma that we have against it, right? We have this idea of shutting down that, as if the shutting down of it will prevent them from thinking about it further. So I would say, be open. Listen. Be willing to listen and have that conversation, not putting your personal judgment on them. I went to an all girls Catholic High School, and I understood some of the, you know, judgments that people had against that from a religious perspective, because boy oh boy did Sister Mary Catherine let us know her thoughts on what was considered certain sins, right? But I don’t need to put that judgment on or impose those beliefs on somebody else if they’re coming to me with this conversation. And then if there’s nothing that you can think about doing you don’t know how to help. You don’t know how to have that conversation. Well, we have the national 988 number for a reason, and that national 988 number gives you the opportunity to connect them with a professional who can have that conversation. It’s the mental health and suicide crisis line, and these are individuals that are trained to talk to people and provide the support when they’re having these thoughts and feelings, even as a therapist, even as somebody who’s been trained, even as somebody who’s worked as a suicidologist, I can talk to clients and strangers about this all day long. It is a much. Harder conversation for me to have with my loved ones and my family members, because I have a personal investment in what’s happening in their lives, and that connection makes it a bit limiting. So I’ve even had people I love call the 988 number, because I’m like, There’s only so much I can do and say, and I need you to talk to somebody else about this, and somebody else who can better help you. I need a, um, I told somebody once I was like, I need a growner adult. Um, I need a bigger grown up that can really give that support, because I didn’t feel like I could in that moment.
HR:
And what other things would you like to see change in society to help lower the suicide rates?
AM:
Oh well, better safety measures, I believe that if there’s better safety measures, we can really have some good strategic efforts to limit the ultimate deaths that happen. Stigma is such a hard one to combat, because I do feel as if we have been addressing mental health stigma for decades now. We’ve been talking about it, we’ve been building more public awareness of it, but I would like people to better understand that mental health is just as important as physical health, if not for me, even more, because your mental health impacts your brain, and if your brain is a functioning right, how can the rest of you react appropriately? And then having conversations like these about trauma, about neurodivergence and how individuals are impacted, about the intersectionalities of identities, and the more that we can have these conversations, and the more that we can build this public awareness and understanding, I think that allows more individuals to come forward when they’re having these feelings. There’s a lot of stereotypes that come up when you talk about mental health, and most of them are very demeaning and negative and stigmatizing. And it’s interesting, because people have this idea of what they think mental health looks like. And I’m like, are you talking about mental health, or are you talking about mental illness? Because those are two completely different things. And so I think it’s so important that people are understanding that mental health in itself is just your emotional well being. And how are you taking care of yourself day to day to stay healthy.
HR:
How can people learn more about you and your work?
AM:
Well, United Way of Broward County does such a huge variety of things for the community that I don’t know if people understand all of the things that we do. So we do have a website that goes into the different programs that we offer and the different services that we provide, the work that I do specifically is within our health pillar, and in our health pillar, we are really focused on not just healthcare, but behavioral health issues. And so under that purview, I do the community wide trainings, where we train individuals on a variety of topics related to behavioral health. I also facilitate a training called Mental Health First Aid. Now Mental Health First Aid is unique, and it is from a the National Council, which is a nationwide organization that is primarily focused on teaching just the general public professionals, service providers, anyone the regular layman, to the expert on how to recognize signs and symptoms of a mental health issue and concern, And then how to help somebody who’s in distress or somebody who’s in crisis. And this is something that our organization offers our community for free, free of charge, for anyone who’s interested, it’s an eight hour course, which I know sounds long, but I promise you, when you’re in the class, by the time itself, you’re like, wait, we’re done already. But I liken it to CPR. We all learn CPR, usually because we’re required to through a job position or a volunteer rule, or maybe if you have personal interest, but CPR is usually a training that we undertake because we want to learn how to save lives. Mental Health First Aid is exactly the same thing. It’s not medical focus, it’s mental health focus, but that first aid that it trains you in is really how can you help somebody who is in distress, and how can you make sure you’re helping to save somebody’s life? And then it gives you legitimate steps and strategies on how to have these hard conversations, how to have these awkward discussions. Because it’s not always easy. It’s a bit awkward. It feels easy between us, but for a lot of people, it doesn’t feel that way. And then how can you make sure that you’re connecting them to the appropriate help and care that they may need further on.
HR:
from your perspective, how can mental health providers better help a diverse range of patients?
AM:
Well, from the perspective of the providers, I think what is most important is making sure that they get better training. Our academic careers provide us with the foundation, but as you go out into the field, you learn really quick that what I learned in school don’t always apply to the actual field work. And boy was that a shocker for me, because my first foray into this field was working at a psychiatric unit, and I learned really quick that I had to think on my feet. I couldn’t use the book smarts for a lot of the situations. And so it’s with the continued training that you really are able to gain better skills to address and a lot of the times, people tend to just stay focused on their particular areas of interest. And so I’ll go to training for this, because this is all I’m interested in, but it may not necessarily apply to the wide range of individuals that you’re dealing with. And so looking for those diverse trainings so that you can gain that knowledge about working with the different populations is important. Learning about different racial experiences other than your own, so you can become more culturally aware and culturally sensitive to the different needs of different communities. Learning about how individuals with certain disabilities have to navigate the world that is different from your own, learning about the LGBTQIA population and what their experiences are and the intersectionalities that they bring into these rooms. Learning about neurodivergency, you’d be surprised how many people don’t understand autism, and I am always surprised at that, because I come from a family of autism and neurodivergence, and so I tend to think that everybody knows what certain behaviors are. And just yesterday, in my office, I had to explain to a colleague what a stim was, what stimming was. And she’s like, well, I’ve never heard of that. And I was like, how have you never heard of stimming? I was like, everybody stims, not just people on the spectrum. I was like, You stim all the time. And I told her what her stim was, and she was like, shocked. And I was like, You really never heard that word. And so it’s with that further training that people are able to build their awareness, so that when you are interacting with people who don’t have your shared identity, you’re better able to understand their needs, instead of trying to come from a perspective of like only your personal background.
HR:
And now Aisha will tell you very briefly what stimming is.
AM:
Oh, my goodness, what is stimming? And so the way that I explained it to this colleague was that it is a stimulating activity that a person does, oftentimes, to self soothe their brain in different ways. And so I’ll use my son for an example. One of his statement is, we call him a looper. He loops. He verbally loops by just singing songs or saying the same phrase over and over and over again. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You just gotta ride the wave until he’s done with that particular song, or he physically loops and he just, like, runs in circles around the house. And it doesn’t matter if I physically stand before Him, He’ll then just run around me. But it’s for him. It’s his way of getting his energy and anxiety out. And even when I beg him Please sit down, come sit and I want you to get hurt, he sits for a moment, and then he loops again. So we just call we just know when it’s happening that we have to let it die down on its own. We can’t stop it just because we don’t understand it. It’s going on in his brain, and it helps whatever is happening in here physically expand itself. And different people loop in different ways. You know, I have colleagues that click pens. I have colleagues that rock back and forth. You don’t have to be on the spectrum. To have a thin it’s just these different activities that people do in different ways.
HR:
And some great athletes have turned steaming into a positive training technique. At the old history gym when I was boxing, some people would just jump rope for hours. Boy, were they in good shape.
AM:
And they get the energy out right? Oh, they sleep well at night after doing all that.
HR:
Aisha McDonald, it’s been such a pleasure to have you here at different brains. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m sure our audience has also, and I’m sure they’ll be getting in touch with you through the United Way of Broward, most definitely keep up the great work you’re doing, and we hope you’ll come back soon.
AM:
Oh, I’ll come back anytime you ask me to. That’s never a problem. Thank you.
