{"id":34100,"date":"2023-05-11T12:50:37","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T18:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/local-barbecue-to-bring-awareness-to-veteran-suicide\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:16:15","slug":"local-barbecue-to-bring-awareness-to-veteran-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/local-barbecue-to-bring-awareness-to-veteran-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Local barbecue to bring awareness to veteran suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flanders
Flanders poppies.<\/span>Adobe Stock image<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Saturday, May 13, the Disabled American Veterans and the Montezuma County Public Health Department are hosting a community barbecue and social at 4 p.m. to bring awareness to veteran suicide and the resources offered to those in the community who are in need of help.<\/p>\n

The barbecue will take place at the County Annex Building, 107 N. Chestnut St. All members of the community are invited to attend.<\/p>\n

Ron Terry, the Commander DAV Chapter 44 VTF Grant Administrator, said he and the other organizers hope the barbecue will provide the opportunity to get more suicide-help resources out to the community.<\/p>\n

Wes Soule, a volunteer from DAV and Navy veteran, expressed his gratefulness to businesses in the community that have pitched in, helping them cover almost all of the food for the barbecue. Jennifer Wade with American Family is also loaning a corn hole game to the event as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to bring awareness,\u201d Terry said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of resources because we\u2019re a rural community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone is going through depression, we want them to know they can go somewhere and get some help. Just have somebody to talk to,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

Terry said in the three years that he\u2019s been working with DAV, they\u2019ve had many people who were contemplating suicide come in and talk with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s happened several times. People come in distraught, ready to end it and we sit down and talk with them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Soule noted many people who contemplate suicide are lonely, and spoke of the mental health professional shortage in the area, saying that was one obstacle they had noticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMental health care is one of the issues we\u2019re discovering,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a real shortage of mental health professionals and I think that\u2019s because of the limited pay for people in the medical field in a rural community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Information about suicide-prevention training will also be present at the barbecue and will include information on training that some of the DAV members will be taking part in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to go through QPR training, which stands for question, persuade and follow up. It\u2019s a pretty in-depth training class and we\u2019re going to be qualified to do that for other people. We\u2019re trying to get as many people in the community aware,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Terry likened the suicide-prevention training to learning CPR, saying that knowing the red flags and signs of suicide and how to help the person experiencing those symptoms is vital to saving lives of those who are suicidal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like CPR. The more people that know CPR, the less people that are going to have deaths and heart failures,\u201d Terry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re also encouraging people to do QPR training. We\u2019re not medical experts, we\u2019re what you would call gatekeepers. People who are a front line for people who could be in crisis,\u201d Soule said.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the amount of people who attend the event, Soule said he was hopeful those who attend would leave with a greater understanding of the importance of suicide awareness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the main things I wanted is awareness about suicide issues, so I\u2019m going to feel good regardless of the amount of people that come in, that we\u2019ve created a community awareness,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

barbecue is open to all members of the community who wish to learn more about suicide prevention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29,955,3796],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-34100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-suicide","tag-suicide-prevention"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82473,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34100\/revisions\/82473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34100"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=34100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}