VA Suicide Prevention, Education and Outreach

April Foreman is a Licensed Psychologist serving Veterans as Suicide Prevention Coordinator for Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System. She also serves as Suicide Prevention Lead for Veterans Integrated Service Network 16, a region of Veterans Affairs. She is passionate about helping people with severe and sometimes lethal emotional pain. She is known for her work at the intersection of technology, social media, and mental health, with nationally recognized implementations of innovations in the use of technology and mood tracking. She is also a founder and moderator of the first sponsored regular mental health chat on Twitter, the weekly Suicide Prevention Social Media chat (#SPSM, sponsored by the American Association of Suicidology, AAS). In the two years this chat has become one of the largest and most active mental health centered social media communities on Twitter. She is currently the Social Media Chair for AAS. Her dream is to use her unique skills and vision to build a mental health system effectively and elegantly designed to serve the people who need it.

April will be reviewing with us methods to reach Veterans and their families`, connect those who are facing challenges with care, and reduce the stigma of seeking support for crises such as suicide. She will also include an overview of VA’s integrated approach to suicide prevention which will outline contact-based approaches to mental health outreach and education and key elements of VA’s suicide prevention program, including local suicide prevention coordinators, the Veterans Crisis Line, and the Make the Connection campaign.

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