Suicide prevention training was offered to any interested Wayne State College students and Wayne residents at WSC Thursday evening. Kyle Greene, assistant director of Residence Life, spoke earnestly to those in attendance in the Bluestem Room of the Kanter Student Center.

“This training has been going on for a while,” Greene said. “It is one of the nationally recognized ones, as far as its information and how it’s presented. [Trainees] who go through the training actually learn and take information away from it.”

Along with providing general statistics and information about suicide, the training also focused on practical training people can use in their everyday lives.

“The main purpose of QPR (Question, Persuade and Refer), is to help people who may have thoughts of suicide,” Greene said. “From there, they train others around them, look for signs, know how to talk to the person and then refer the person on to the resources, that can get them the long term help they need.”

The steps of QPR are put into action when things go awry for people in need.

“I think [the training] gave [the audience] a chance to learn a skill,” Greene said. “They learned what to look for when people around them may be suffering and then how to address the person in a way that will be helpful for that person. As far as help for themselves, I thought that just even knowing that there is help out there, if they are ever struggling, they know the resources, they can immediately call [for help].”

One of the problems with suicide is that those suffering and considering it often go unnoticed by those around them. The training aimed at providing key warning signs to watch out for as well as what a person may do to help after identifying a person in need.

“It helped me figure out ways to support others that are in need of help,” freshman Grace Bailey said. “If I were to need this information for a friend, I could easily use it.”

Greene was impressed with the initial turnout, but many attendees left before the entire training lesson was complete.

“[The training] went okay, it was disappointing when people left halfway through because they did not get the resources I wanted them to have,” Greene said. “Hopefully getting those first couple of steps, they were able to take something away from it. It was a bigger group than I anticipated, I was excited because students realized those around them may be suffering, and hopefully in the future they will be there for the ones in need.”

Greene’s goal in openly sharing his own story of losing a loved one to suicide was to personalize the issue as well as encourage the audience to look at the training as a potentially life saving guide.

“This training does affect me personally, I have lost an uncle to suicide, so it does affect me in a great way,” Greene said. “It was hard to get up in front of people and talk about this because it was something that touched me, but I hope to be able to talk to the audience so they do not have to go through this suffering, that hopefully even one person in the three years I’ve done this can go and save a family member or a friend.”