'We all have a role to play.' Suicide response coordinator talks community after cluster

CANTON ‒ Some people live by mottos. Snappy phrases about hard work and kindness and self-affirmation navigate them through challenges in their everyday lives.

Elena Aslanides-Kandis uses a mantra in her work as suicide and community response coordinator at Stark County Mental Health & Addiction Recovery: We all have a role to play in preventing suicide.

It's a fitting motto for the Stark County native. She arrived at the agency in 2018 — shortly after a dozen teens living in the Perry, Plain, Jackson, Northwest and Canton Local school districts died by suicide. Coming into the position during a time when many in the community were trying to make sense of the tragedies, she said, was a terrifying experience.

"I felt like a lot of people were trying to run from it," Aslanides-Kandis said, "because people didn't know what to do. Here I was running towards the problem, wanting to make a difference."

Four years in, she is focused on educating Stark County school districts and communities on the ways they can help at the various stages of suicide prevention.

'What is happening in Stark County?'

She didn't always plan on working in mental health.

After she graduated from GlenOak High School in 2000, Aslanides-Kandis went to Ohio Northern University to study pharmacy. She took a psychology and law class that fascinated her, inspiring her to change her major. She transferred to the University of Akron to pursue a degree in psychology. A professor suggested she consider a career in counseling.

"That's what I ended up doing," Aslanides-Kandis said.

She graduated from Akron in 2004 and then earned her master's from Kent State in 2007. She started her career as a behavioral health counselor, providing direct care to children and teens. Aslanides-Kandis later became a clinical manager for school-based services, coordinating and supervising mental health services in Summit County school districts. She was in that role when the suicide cluster occurred.

"I remember talking with one superintendent who just was, like, 'What is happening in Stark County?'" she said.

The tragedies affected her as a Plain Township native, resident and mom of two. She never wanted her young children to see suicide as an option, she said, and she knew how it can devastate a community. Aslanides-Kandis was in sixth grade when a peer of hers died by suicide. Her voice grew heavy with emotion as she recalled the experience on a recent Tuesday afternoon at Muggswigz Coffee and Tea in downtown Canton.

"Going to his calling hours," she said. "Seeing his mom struggle in the way that she did. That has impacted my life I think in more ways than I even realized at the time."

Aslanides-Kandis' role as suicide and community response coordinator was a new position to StarkMHAR. It came as a recommendation from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention after federal public health officials spent time in Stark County in 2018 investigating the crisis. The agency wanted someone to focus on the entire suicide prevention continuum, which includes prevention, intervention and "postvention," a term used to describe activities that reduce risk and promote healing after a suicide.

Aslanides-Kandis took the job about halfway through 2018. The 40-year-old has short dark hair and speaks about suicide prevention with a sense of compassion and honesty. She said she learned a lot about responding to suicide early on in her position.

"I think there's a lot more education available (in suicide prevention)," she said. "But postvention, what happens after a suicide death, that was something that this county I think just really struggled with."

Aslanides-Kandis said it's difficult to walk into a school that has recently experienced a loss, but the way a district responds to it plays an important role in preventing future suicide deaths. Hosting large community gatherings, creating memorials or announcing a death over a loudspeaker can inadvertently harm people, she said, leaving them in an unsafe place.

"If we can't provide support, control and structure, it's not something that we should be doing as a community," she said.

She said StarkMAHR based its approach to postvention on three pillars: consistency, support and structure. Treating every loss the same, providing a sense of normalcy and offering counseling to those who need it are a few of the necessary steps to responding to any death, including one by suicide.

"When kids, even as adults, anybody loses somebody, regardless of how they died, that causes you to question your mortality, which is why we're constantly concerned about suicide," Aslanides-Kandis said. "When you look at how lives are remembered and memorialized, we've had to do a lot of work in that area just to ensure that other kids who could be at risk or are vulnerable aren't considering suicide because they want to be remembered."

She takes pride in being able to give support to school districts dealing with loss, she said, and working to prevent future ones.

Aslanides-Kandis said this "multiple prong" strategy helped the agency decrease the county's rate of suicide deaths. Seventy-one individuals died by suicide in Stark County in 2018, according to a report from StarkMHAR. Seven of those individuals were between the ages of 10 and 19.

In 2020, Stark County had 57 suicide deaths in 2020, with four individuals under the age of 18. Seventy-six people in Stark County died by suicide in 2021, and one of those deaths was someone under 18.

Research from the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the rate of suicide deaths among teens has increased since the start of the pandemic in several states, including Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Virginia.

Aslanides-Kandis said many communities are still struggling, but that Stark County's numbers have decreased so far this year.

"As of early August, we were still trending down for the year, so we'll see where we end up," she said.

Making a difference

Aslanides-Kandis wants people to know they can make a difference in helping prevent suicide.

People can practice active listening, check up on their friends and family, and know and look out for the warning signs of suicide. Many have a misconception that asking someone if they are at risk will increase the likelihood of them attempting suicide, she said, but that isn't the case.

"There's research that shows that by asking someone if they're having thoughts of suicide, it actually can decrease their anxiety because it shows you're open to talking about that," Aslanides-Kandis said.

Allyson Rey, director of marketing and communications at StarkMHAR, said Aslanides-Kandis' rallying cry that everyone has a part in suicide prevention has stuck with her over the years.

"We've been taught just as a staff, it's OK to ask somebody that question," Rey said. "You're not going to plant the idea in their head. They're not going to think 'Oh, you think I'm that bad that you have to ask me that.'"

Aslanides-Kandis said one of her goals is to make people more open to talking about suicide in not only schools and the health care system but in the community. She encourages people to keep the phone number for Stark County's Mobile Response Team (330-452-6000) saved in their phone. Anyone in Stark can call this number if they or someone they know needs urgent intervention.

"There's a chance you will come in contact with someone in crisis at some point," Aslanides-Kandis said.

'We worked hard to change that.'

Every year, the Stark County Suicide Prevention Coalition — which includes StarkMHAR — hosts a walk designed to increase suicide awareness. It was structured "completely differently" before Aslanides-Kandis joined StarkMHAR and became the organizer.

"It was just for suicide loss survivors," she said. "What I was hearing was they felt like they were on this island alone and the community didn't care about them. So we worked hard to change that."

The event now features speakers and a one-mile walk anyone in the community is invited to attend. Participants this year received a suicide awareness pin and a candle to light Sept. 10, which is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Aslanides-Kandis said the walk is one of her favorite parts of her job. The 2022 walk was the agency's most attended event to date, she said.

"Leaving that event, I feel so hopeful every year," she said. "It's emotionally exhausting, but to see people hurting who previously may have felt like they were on this island alone ... just hearing their stories and being grateful to be able to come together is one of the most rewarding things."

Reach Paige at 330-580-8577 or pmbennett@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @paigembenn.

Where to get help

Need help? The following resources are available any time of day:

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 (or, simply dial “988”)

• Stark County Crisis Hotline: 330-452-6000

• Crisis Text Line, text ‘4hope’ to 741-741

• Trevor Project Lifeline for LGBTQ youth: 866-488-7386

• Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860

• Military & Veterans Crisis Line: 800-273-8255, press 1

• Military & Veterans Crisis Text Line: 838255

CommQuest Detox at Aultman Hospital: 330-830-3393

Learn how to make your home a “Safe Home” by removing unnecessary risks for substance abuse and suicide at starkmhar.org/prevention-resources/safe-home.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Stark County suicide response coordinator discusses work after cluster