Latest news with #NationalSuicideandCrisisLifeline
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The mother of an L.A. teen who took his own life is fighting for a new mental health tool for LGBTQ+ youth
Bridget McCarthy believes that if her son Riley Chart had quick and easy access to a suicide prevention hotline designed for queer young people, he might be alive today. Chart, a trans teen who had once endured bullying because he was different, took his own life at the family's home during the COVID-19 lockdown in September 2020 — two weeks after his 16th birthday. 'I truly believe that had there been an LGBTQ-specific [help] number right in front of him, he would've tried it,' McCarthy said. State lawmakers are set to vote in August on a bill that McCarthy and its sponsors say could save the lives of other young queer Californians. California Assembly Bill 727 would require ID cards for public school students in grades 7 through 12 and students at public institutions of higher education to list the free LGBTQ+ crisis line operated by The Trevor Project on the back, starting in July 2026. The Trevor Project is a West Hollywood-based nonprofit that the federal government cut ties with when it eliminated funding for LGBTQ+ counseling through the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (9-8-8). The lifeline was expected to stop routing crisis calls to The Trevor Project and six other LGBTQ+ contractors Thursday. It's one of several actions in the second Trump administration that critics fear will roll back years of progress of securing health-care services for queer Americans. 'When the Trump administration threatened and then went through with their threat to cut the program completely, that told us that we had to step up to the plate,' said Democratic Assemblymember Mark González of Los Angeles, who said he introduced the legislation to ensure that queer youth receive support from counselors who can relate to their life experiences. 'Our goal here is to be the safety net — especially for those individuals who are not in Los Angeles but in other parts of the state who need this hotline to survive.' California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the L.A. LGBT Center and the Sacramento LGBT Center all have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. Gov. Gavin Newsom told Politico the Trump administration's 9-8-8 decision was 'indefensible' and that he also backs the bill. His office said the state's $4.7 billion Master Plan for Kids' Mental Health includes partnerships with organizations such as The Trevor Project. González said the bill originally included private schools but in response to conservative opposition, the mandate was amended so it would be limited to public schools. With federal funding for the LGBTQ+ crisis counselors who field calls through the 9-8-8 lifeline running out on Thursday, local nonprofits and elected officials have vowed to fill the void. L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Lindsey P. Horvath authored a motion to explore the impact of the cut and see whether the county can help to continue the service. The board unanimously approved it Tuesday. 'The federal government may be turning its back on LGBTQ+ people, but here in L.A. County we'll do everything within our power to keep this community safe,' Hahn said in a statement after the vote. About 40% of young queer people in the U.S. have seriously contemplated suicide compared to 13% of their peers, according to a teen mental health survey published last fall by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Trevor Project and other organizations have reported a rise in the number of people calling crisis lines to seek mental health support, both in California and nationwide. Trans Americans have been particularly shaken by the backlash against LGBTQ+ people and by the prospect of new restrictions on gender-affirming healthcare, according to new findings published this week by researchers at the University of Vermont. Their survey of 489 gender-diverse adults after the 2024 election, published Wednesday in JAMA Open Network, found that nearly a third of those interviewed would consider risky DIY hormone therapies if treatments disappear elsewhere. A fifth of respondents reported having suicidal thoughts. As the mother of a trans child who died from suicide, McCarthy said she wants to use the lessons she's learned to educate and advocate for other trans young people and their families in similar situations. McCarthy, who lives in Culver City, has started a memorial fund with The Trevor Project, organized suicide prevention walks in West L.A. and attended Pride festivals to hand out crisis line information. She remembers Riley as an artistic and warmhearted son who joined LGBTQ+ groups and built a network of friends while attending high schools in both Santa Monica and Culver City. Riley had a therapist for support living as a trans teen, but during the pandemic, he found it hard to cope with not being able to spend time in person with his friends. The confinement made him increasingly irritable. He was staying up later than usual and spending excessive time on his phone, McCarthy said. After Riley died, the family discovered that he'd texted a gay friend for help. 'The only other number in his phone was a 10-digit veterans hotline number — that he did not call,' McCarthy said. 'That's why you have to have a lifeline that speaks to different populations. A veterans hotline will not work for a 16-year-old kid who's struggling with their identity.' When Riley was 12, McCarthy took him to the Pride parade in West Hollywood hoping that he would experience the feeling of belonging that he seemed to yearn for. He loved it. 'Ry said he'd found his people,' McCarthy recalls, using the family's nickname for him. 'He was like, 'This is it — I'm home, mom.'' When Riley's mother took him to Pride a second time the following year, he bought a trans pride flag that became one of his prized possessions. 'He was wrapped in it when he went, when he left us,' McCarthy said. McCarthy spoke by phone from one of Riley's favorite places, Lummi Island in Washington state, near the U.S.-Canada border. The family laid Riley's remains on the island and McCarthy goes to visit the grave site four times a year to care for the maple tree planted in his memory, admire the painted stones his friends placed around it and talk to her son. McCarthy said she and Riley visited family friends on the island almost every year when he was younger. Especially during middle school when he faced bullying from classmates and issues over which restroom to use, the island served as a refuge where McCarthy saw her son at his most carefree. He loved climbing trees, swimming and herding cows, far from the pressures of being a kid in L.A. 'When you'd open the car door, it was just like opening the barn gate,' McCarthy remembers. 'Like a colt across a field, he would just run. It gave us a chance for some peace.'
The Hill
18-06-2025
- Health
- The Hill
GOP Rep. Lawler: Trump cutting LGBTQ youth suicide hotline is ‘wrong'
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Wednesday that the Trump administration's decision to cut the LGBTQ youth suicide hotline is 'wrong.' 'This is wrong. According to studies, LGBTQ+ young people have an elevated risk of suicide and are more likely than their peers to attempt it. We should ensure they have the resources necessary to get help,' Lawler said in a post on the social platform X. 'The 988 hotline has been a lifesaver. This decision should be reversed,' he added. The Trump administration recently ordered a crisis service for LGBTQ youth to close within 30 days in an action that opponents have said will result in dire consequences. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said Tuesday that 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, is going to 'no longer silo' LGBTQ youth services, also known as the 'Press 3 option' starting July 17. The agency made the announcement during Pride month, a time when LGBTQ people celebrate their identities. In the announcement, the agency said that the 'Press 3 option,' which started in 2022 during former President Biden's term, had provided specialized services to 'LGB+ youth,' taking 'transgender' out of the acronym in line with an earlier executive order stating that the U.S recognizes male and female as the only two sexes. In May, Lawler and California Rep. Young Kim (R) wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stating 'concern regarding reports that the Department of Health and Human Services budget request for fiscal year 2026 would eliminate the Specialized Services for LGBTQ+ youth within the 988 Suicide Prevention and Crisis Lifeline.' 'We firmly believe in parents' rights, and think they must play a significant role in this process, but we cannot leave our children without critical mental health care,' Young and Lawler said in the letter. The Hill has reached out to SAMHSA and the Department of Health and Human services for comment.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
John Brenkus, founder and host of Emmy-winning ‘Sports Science' show, dies aged 54 after battle with depression
If you are in the US and you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor. If you're a first responder, call the CopLine at 1-800-267-5463. Outside the US, a worldwide directory of resources and international hotlines is provided by the International Association for Suicide Prevention, and you can turn to Befrienders Worldwide. John Brenkus, the founder and host of the Emmy-winning 'Sports Science' show, has died aged 54 after a battle with depression, a statement on his social media account said on Sunday. 'It is with profound sadness that we share the news that John Brenkus has passed away,' the statement on Brenkus' X account said. 'John, co-founder of Base Productions, Founder of and co-creator and host of the six-time Emmy award-winning 'Sport Science,' had been battling depression. 'John lost his fight with this terrible illness on May 31, 2025. His heartbroken family and friends request privacy at this time, and encourage anyone who is struggling with depression to seek help.' Former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley, who worked with Brenkus on paid his respects on X, saying: 'RIP' as well as a prayer and heart emoji. Brenkus previously told Wiley that he fell into a 'very deep depression' after selling 'Sports Science' and was suicidal at times. Brenkus said that he was close to taking his own life until his dog until his dog, Zepplin, pulled on the legs of his jeans, which he credits for saving his life. 'In my suicidal funk, I was like: 'What am I doing?' I literally picked up my phone, called my mom and said: 'There's something wrong with me. I am mentally lost,'' Brenkus told Wiley. He explained that he went through a 'battle' to recover, going to six different psychologists and psychiatrists. 'Sports Science,' which Brenkus founded and hosted, first aired in 2007 on Fox Sports before moving to ESPN. The show sought to uncover 'sports' biggest myths and mysteries by using cutting-edge technology to measure momentum, friction and the laws of gravity,' per ESPN. In a tribute to Brenkus on ESPN, he was described as an 'innovator, an entertainer and an educator.'
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump, RFK Jr. worried about ‘threat' of antidepressants. These Kentuckians push back.
From left: Tom Streeter, Lindsay Fouts, Matt Milligan. (Photos provided) This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Tom Streeter clearly remembers the day he nearly died from depression, left untreated for years. In the mid-1990s, Streeter was in North Carolina working on his dissertation when his mental health tanked. 'One day, I found myself sitting in my office, wondering how to kill myself,' said Streeter, now 61. 'It occurred to me that maybe I ought to talk to somebody, because if I actually came up with a way that was acceptable, I was going to really be in trouble.' Streeter, who's now lived in Boone County more than 20 years, called a friend who referred him to a psychiatrist. Quickly, he got set up with talk therapy and was prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant that had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a few years prior. He's been on Zoloft ever since and credits it with saving his life. 'It's been 30 years,' Streeter told the Lantern. 'There's been all kinds of ups and downs, but I think, frankly, it's the only reason I'm here.' Streeter and other Kentuckians who've taken selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to treat depression are angry and confused over recent national rhetoric surrounding the drug class. Those who shared their stories with the Kentucky Lantern overwhelmingly said antidepressants improved their lives, and, in some cases, saved them. In a February executive order, President Donald Trump called for more research into SSRIs and directed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to study the 'threat' posed by the medications in his role as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Kentucky experts agree that more research is always welcome, but say SSRIs are safe and effective at treating depression. Still, the federal Make America Healthy Again Commission, which Kennedy will chair, is charged with understanding chronic diseases. It will 'assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants and weight-loss drugs,' according to the executive order. Kentucky lawmakers have moved to establish a task force aimed at implementing the MAHA principles in Kentucky. Kennedy's comments about SSRIs include saying they can be addictive and worse to quit taking than heroin — statements Kentucky experts say are false. 'That's a biologically inaccurate statement, because SSRIs are not addictive. Heroin is addictive,' said Brighid Kleinman, a Louisville psychologist. 'Tapering off appropriately, it works every time. You don't taper off an SSRI and then have a craving to go back on it. That's not how it works. You might find that your symptoms come back, in which case maybe it is helpful to be on it, but you're not thinking about it every day. You're not wishing you had this drug. You're not doing illegal things to try to get to it.' Early on … people would ask, 'what do they feel like?' Well, when they're really working, they don't feel like anything. That's the whole point. I would experience emotions in a way that I'd actually … read about in books. – Tom Streeter, who takes Zoloft for depression Kentuckians who are on antidepressants to treat mental health issues find the recent rhetoric surrounding the medications upsetting. 'They are absolutely full of crap,' Streeter said. 'Whatever their agenda is, it has nothing to do with anybody's well-being. I'm not going to listen to a guy who's had brain worms — literal brain worms — tell me what should be going in my freaking head. It makes me very angry.' Streeter was referring to Kennedy's experience being misdiagnosed with a tumor that turned out to be a brain worm. He added: 'I don't know what these people's agendas are. I don't care. Just leave me the hell out of it.' Kentucky medical experts, doctors and psychologists who weighed in on SSRIs said that overall, the medications are helpful for treating moderate to severe depression. SSRIs are used to treat depression, mainly, and may also treat anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Dr. Rif El-Mallakh, a professor of psychiatry and mood disorder expert at the UofL School of Medicine, said a lot is still unknown about the depressed brain. 'If you have a heart attack, we know that there's a blood vessel that's blocked and a piece of the heart dies,' he explained. 'But when you get depressed, we don't actually know what is happening in the brain to create the symptoms.' Nevertheless, depression is 'clearly a dysfunction' that results in a 'cascade of abnormalities' like low energy, sleep disruption, inflammation and more. 'It's a physical dysfunction of the body, but it doesn't produce direct physical symptoms,' said El-Mallakh. 'We can measure physical abnormalities … but the symptoms tend to be more subjective, or at least they seem more subjective.' When a person is depressed, they may experience unwanted behavioral changes — like irritability — just like an involuntary sneeze, he explained. 'We do know that when you're depressed, that you have difficulty functioning. That is, you're unable to do your routine tasks. You are less effective in everything,' said El-Mallakh. 'You might get up and do the dishes, but it takes you twice as long to do the dishes. You might indeed take care of your kids, but it takes more effort to take care of your kids.' Enter antidepressants, which can help regulate emotions, allowing people to better cope with stressors. 'The idea is that your brain is not using the serotonin it has, and it's using it up too fast, and these medications are helping keep the amount of serotonin stable in your brain,' explained Dr. Fareesh Kanga, a University of Kentucky assistant professor of psychiatry. Hannah Johnson, who holds a doctor of pharmacy and is an associate professor in the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, said people who have depression and anxiety may not be holding onto enough serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate moods, among other things. SSRIs block the serotonin reuptake transporter from 'suck(ing) up that serotonin,' resulting in depressive symptoms. In doing so, Johnson explained, the medications 'allow more serotonin to hang out in the synapse.' Psychologists say the results are clear: their patients who get on antidepressants are often better able to thrive in therapy and handle stress. Katie McBride, a Louisville psychologist, said sometimes clients are 'stuck,' be that due to complex trauma or severe depression. 'When I'm talking to clients, I'm saying: 'you're functioning, but you're using all of your energy, like you're clinging to the side of a mountain, and … because of that, you're just in a survival mode because your symptoms are so severe.' And so oftentimes, with the antidepressants, it's kind of helping to take enough of the edge off, or to kind of get on the landing to some stability,' McBride explained. With the medication, she said, 'you're not all the way away from the edge, but you're not having to use all of your energy to just … stay alive.' With that extra energy, she said, clients can learn about their emotions and develop skills to manage their behavior. Because of this, she said: 'the gold standard, if you will, is always … psychotherapy plus medication.' Dr. Caitlin Briggs, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky, said the medications are 'the first line treatments' for both children and adults. While Briggs agreed that it's ideal to have both therapy and medication, she pointed to therapist shortages that can keep people from getting established with a therapist. Other times, symptoms of depression are so severe a person may not be able to participate in therapy right away. 'Sometimes a kid is severely depressed or severely anxious that it's difficult for them to even participate or be receptive to the therapy, and a medication can really lighten the load a little bit and allow them to be able to participate better in the therapy treatment,' said Briggs. 'And there are kids that, when they've had the combination treatment, they're able to come off of the medication at some point. And that's always the goal but we understand that that's not the case for everyone.' Kleinman said SSRI experiences among her clients are 'overall good.' 'They're so mild, right? They are not a dangerous medicine,' Kleinman said. 'It is perfectly fine to take an SSRI, and if it doesn't work for you, stop taking it. It makes sense to prescribe them as a first line of treatment to see if it helps, because there's so few downsides.' Those 'downsides' Kleinman referred to — side effects of the medications — can include upset stomach in the beginning and, in some people, sexual dysfunction such as difficulty having an orgasm. 'Often it's having or sustaining an erection or feeling pleasure from sex,' she said. 'Those are relatively common. Much of the time, doctors will either change your medicine or reduce your medicine, because there's so many different SSRIs that if you're having sexual side effects with one of them, you may not with another one.' Johnson, the pharmacy expert, said depression itself can cause sexual dysfunction, so it's sometimes tricky to figure out if the disease is causing the issue or the treatment. The solution will vary person to person, she said. Experts agreed: it's important to have a long taper when stopping an SSRI, and to not quit the medications abruptly or without physician guidance. Stopping abruptly can result in 'discontinuation syndrome,' Kanga explained, which can come with some unpleasant side effects that people without medical training sometimes misinterpret as a withdrawal, but is not. SSRIs come with a 'black box warning' from the FDA, which says people younger than 25 may experience a small increase in suicidal thoughts. 'This was a blanket black box warning that they required all antidepressants to put onto their labeling — so they didn't specifically look at specific drugs and study specific drugs and assess for suicide or suicidal thinking or behaviors,' Johnson explained. 'They just looked back at all of the studies of these medications and saw that there was potentially a small increase in suicidal thinking or behaviors, and then they just … globally labeled it and put it on all of the antidepressants.' The black box warning came after the FDA analyzed clinical trials and found a small number of young people experienced more suicidality after starting treatment, according to the Mayo Clinic. 'The analysis showed that some children and teens taking antidepressants had a small increase in suicidal thoughts, compared with those taking a sugar pill (placebo),' according to the Mayo Clinic. None of the people in the studies ended their lives. Other research shows antidepressants effectively treat depression in this population. Experts emphasized: untreated major depression is a high risk factor for suicide. Prescribers will monitor a patient for increased energy when they start treatment. This, too, is when talk therapy is helpful. Therapists can help people navigate new feelings and energy that come with treating depression with medication. 'It's something that we definitely counsel people on and tell them about,' Johnson said. 'But it shouldn't prevent someone from being able to get one of these medications if they are able to have the support and monitoring for increased suicide risk during that time frame.' Kanga pointed out that suicide is already a leading cause of death among children and adolescents. The COVID-19 pandemic and its related breaks from the social interactions of school didn't help, nor do intergenerational trauma and social media. 'While, of course, we should put research money into cancer and into improving all aspects of children's lives,' Kanga said, 'if you want to stop having children die as children, we need to stop suicide, and we need to invest in mental health to do that.' Not only are SSRIs not addicting, experts say that when they work right, they won't feel like much of anything. While some people might experience an 'emotional blunting,' as McBride put it, Johnson said 'our goal is to have that full range of emotions' when on antidepressants. 'If someone's feeling that numbness, then we're not treating them with the right medication or the right approach,' Johnson said. Streeter thinks the misconception that antidepressants make people numb can be stigmatizing for people, though he is unbothered. 'Nobody's going to throw any contempt at me that I haven't thrown at myself,' he said. 'So … I don't worry a hell of a lot about it. Early on … people would ask, 'what do they feel like?' Well, when they're really working, they don't feel like anything. That's the whole point. I would experience emotions in a way that I'd actually … read about in books.' Most experts who spoke to the Lantern said there's no danger in staying on antidepressants longterm. El-Mallakh has some concerns about long-term use, but admits his opinion is a 'minority position.' Matt Milligan, who is from Versailles, first got on an antidepressant in high school. He was suicidal, and he voiced it often. His mother took him to a doctor who prescribed Effexor, which he's been on — with a few breaks — ever since. (Effexor is an antidepressant but in a different drug class than SSRIs). If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Still, Milligan says stigma around mental health is going backwards. 'In the late '90s and early 2000s there was an effort to de-stigmatize all this stuff — mental stuff — and now it's like we're under the gun again, and we can't really talk about it,' he said. 'It's like we have to go to our little online message groups or whatever, to just talk about … what we're feeling or what we're dealing with.' It 'makes people like me want to just slide back into the shadows where we can just kind of chill … and not have to worry about too much.' Milligan, 42, blames national politics and their trickle-down effect on Kentucky. 'Currently … politically, it's okay to be mean and disparaging towards people and … the meaner you are, the louder you are, the better you are,' he said. Kleinman has noted 'terror' among her clients lately. 'My patients are terrified that their lifesaving medicines are going to go away, or they're not going to have access to the thing that allows them to get out of bed or not be too anxious to work,' she said. 'I am seeing a lot of fear.' Lindsay Fouts, 42, said SSRIs helped her cope with 'real bad postpartum depression' and they helped her manage thoughts of suicide. Now, the Louisville woman is worried about the future. 'I'm anxious about everything happening in Washington right now,' she said. 'I'm anxious about everything happening politically right now, very anxious. And I have anxiety, so it doesn't help.' Rob Mattheu, who said SSRIs helped him cope with anxiety and panic surrounding the loss of his father, has a 'live and let live' mentality. 'If you don't feel they're right for you, then definitely don't take them, but don't dismiss the fact that they've helped other people,' the Fern Creek man, 54, said. Experts said more research and education on SSRIs are always welcome, but cautioned against buying into misinformation. 'For the people it works for, it can be life changing,' Kleinman said. 'I don't think we should prescribe less of them. I think that our research needs to get better in terms of figuring out for whom SSRIs will be helpful.' Briggs said stigma has improved, but there remain populations who see mental health as something one can choose to believe in or not. 'It's not necessarily something that you believe in,' Briggs, the UK psychiatrist, said. 'It's not like Santa Claus, it's not like the tooth fairy. Mental health is just as important as physical health. And if you don't treat your mental health, your physical health is not going to be as great.' If you don't feel they're right for you, then definitely don't take them, but don't dismiss the fact that they've helped other people. – Rob Mattheu There remain question marks around the future of antidepressants. For now, UofL psychiatrist El-Mallakh said it would be 'irresponsible' to 'take away something from people that are sick.' 'I think that it is important to understand that everything we do is associated with potential problems. You can argue that hammers are associated with broken thumbs, right? So we need to eliminate hammers? No. We need to use the tool more effectively,' he said. 'We need to understand that everything has its potential harm, and we need to deal with that, minimize that harm as much as possible.' Depression, he reiterated, is 'a disease that has to be treated.' 'Taking away the tools to treat our patients is wrong,' he said. 'It is ethically wrong, morally wrong, scientifically wrong.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A smart start everyone can do to reduce risk of firearm deaths in South Carolina
Gun violence is not a political issue. It's an American crisis, and one in Beaufort County, which had its most homicides in at least 30 years in 2023. Guns contributed to 17 of these 20 deaths. There's a lot that people can do to address the problem — without waiting for the state Legislature or Congress to do something about it, or for mental health care to catch up, or for society as a whole to mend its evil ways. That's the message and the hope of a group of local people worried about America's children and grandchildren, and their own. Dr. Annie Andrews of Mount Pleasant calls gun violence 'a preventable public health crisis.' She has been trying to call attention to it since her unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Daniel Island, in 2022. The first step, Andrews says, is to acknowledge the problem. Then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy did just that last year when his office identified firearm violence for the first time as a national public health crisis. Titled 'Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America,' his advisory is sobering. Firearm-related injuries have sharply risen to be the leading cause of death for youth ages 1-19, surpassing deaths from motor vehicle wrecks, which are decreasing. Nearly 40% of those firearm deaths among adolescents are suicides. That's surprising to me, but not to doctors. Editor's note: If you or someone you know needs help, please text or dial 988 to reach the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has seen so much of it that it has set a new goal to reduce gun violence by 30% by 2030. If health experts recognize the problem, so can we. Strategies are available within each household to reduce the deaths. First is to reduce firearm access. 'It is on us, as adults, to do that,' Andrews said to a Saturday-morning gathering of about 50 people at First Presbyterian Church on Hilton Head Island. In South Carolina and elsewhere, children are being taught what to do if they see a gun: Don't touch it, walk away, tell an adult. That's good, but it won't solve the problem. It is up to adults to store their firearms safely: Locked up, unloaded, and kept separate from ammunition. A national model that can be adopted by schools and others is called 'Be SMART.' SMART is an acronym for tactics everyone can start using now to reduce firearm deaths among children. It's straightforward: S: Secure all firearms in your home and vehicles. M: Model responsible behavior around firearms. This includes talking about gun safety. Andrews said great models to follow are hunters, who represent the pinnacle of responsible gun ownership. A: Ask about the presence of unsecured firearms in other homes before letting your children go there. Normalize the question, Andrews said. Parents are used to doing things like safely storing poisons and lowering the temperature on hot water heaters when young children are present. With the prevalence of firearms, it should be normal to ask about firearm safety before sleepovers or play dates, she said. R: Recognize the role of firearms in suicide. If access to a loaded gun is not readily available, many lives will be saved, and adults can do more to reduce impulsive moves leading to death. T: Tell. Nearly 1,500 American children are killed by guns each year. Talk about it. Do what you can to prevent it. So many families have lost children to firearm deaths in our community and around the nation that a number of organizations exist to address the issue. They include Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has a Lowcountry chapter. Activism and attempting to influence public policy are always options, but it starts at home. Andrews cited a study that found households with locked firearms and separate locked ammunition have a 78% lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries and 85% lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries. Doing that would be a smart start. David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@ .
