Adults and teens are invited to hear Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center (BRCIC) Executive Director Norma Rutledge discuss how to build a suicide safer community, an effort designed to bring awareness a circle of support in our community. Participants will gauge their knowledge of suicide before and after the presentation and will have an opportunity to ask questions. This program is in conjunction with our spring One Book, One Community selection A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, who committed suicide in 1969.
BRCIC “strives to reduce emotional distress, raise hope, save lives, and save the community money through the utilization of crisis intervention services and traumatic loss services. BRCIC began in 1970 as THE PHONE – a 24-hour confidential telephone crisis counseling service on the campus of Louisiana State University. Over the years, this project developed into a nationally certified Crisis Intervention Center that is locally supported and a member agency of the Capital Area United Way.” The Center’s role in crisis intervention and counseling has expanded to comprise all facets of traumatic loss, and focuses on one of the most traumatic, suicide. The BRCIC mission is to offer prevention, intervention and postvention services that provide support in times of crisis and reduce the impact of suicide in the community.
BRCIC’s goal is to reduce emotional distress that can lead to destructive behaviors, especially suicide, for those experiencing a crisis, and to advance the field of crisis prevention through early intervention and postvention.
Dates, times, and locations for the Building a Suicide Safer Community programs are:
Tuesday, April 14, at 6 p.m. at the Central Branch Library
Wednesday, April 15, at 4 p.m. at the Pride-Chaneyville Branch Library
Wednesday, April 22, at 2 p.m. at the Fairwood Branch Library