Nurses concerned with suicide rate

Page 18

More than 200 Aboriginal nurses are expected to meet in Dartmouth, N.S. on Oct. 18 and 19 to discuss the increasing occurance of Native suicide. Also on the agenda is workshops in AIDS prevention.

The Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada is hosting the teaching conference and is basing its discussions on issues coming from an Assembly of First Nations youth conference held last February. The theme of the Dartmouth conference is "Keeping our Children Safe."

Serge Pesant, executive director of the nurses association, said they decided to follow up recommendations of the youth conference because all too often, such recommendations are not acted upon.

"A lot of times, nothing concrete comes out of them," he said.

The association, which has about 300 Aboriginal nurses as members from coast to coast, has been hearing of the suicide and AIDS problems from it's members in every part of the country.

Pesant said suicides have become a major health issue for Aboriginal communities across the country. He said outpost nurses and front line health care workers are seeing a dramatic increase in self-inflicted injuries and suicides.

Statistics from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report the rate of suicides among Aboriginal youth is five to six times higher than of non-Aboriginal youth.

The conference will feature some expert instructors in the fields of AIDS and HIV and suicide prevention.

The nurses are hoping to learn how to spot trouble in the communities before disaster strikes.

Pesant said AIDS, in particular, in Native communities is of great concern because the number of infected people is on the rise. Treatment of the virus is also less available in Aboriginal communities, he said.

"It is the limitations of the care that is given in the Aboriginal communities that is in question," he said.

The suicide prevention workshops available will teach the nurses what leads a person to take his or her own life, how it affects the rest of the community, and how to prevent suicide once the indicators are noticed.

He said this could mean that nurses will take on a much larger role in Native communities. In addition to providing the health care, nurses will also be able to refer individuals to counselling services and prevention programs.

Each workshop at the conference will be videotaped and the tapes made available for communities across Canada. They will serve as educational material for Aboriginal communities that want to work to bring the number of AIDS cases and suicides down.