How do you get someone back over the rail? Nobody seemed to know – but Kevin Briggs was determined to find out. After watching a young man say his final good...
Muse Storytelling elegantly shares Kevin Briggs’ story about his work career and his suicide prevention mission, his humble way of not only helping others, but sharing what he learned. Anyone who hears him speak will gain the knowledge, courage, and skills to help others in crisis. How do you get someone back over the rail? Nobody seemed to know – but Kevin Briggs was determined to find out. Excerpt from the film:
I was with the [California] Highway Patrol for a little over 23 years and I worked on the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is the number one in America for loss of life to suicide, in case people didn’t know that. We get a lot of folks who would jump over that barrier – jump over that pedestrian rail - and stand there, contemplating suicide. My job was to go up and work with them, see if we could get them back. And I did this, 100s of times.
I think anybody who goes into that area should be trained to handle these types of incidents….So I go in at the end of the night and say “Hey Sarge, you got a minute? Can I tell you about this?” And he goes “Yep, that’s what happens down there unfortunately, that’s part of working down there.” I go “Yeah, but is there any kind of training for this?” He goes “Well, we’ll look into it.” I kinda figured it wasn’t going to happen. My solution was to research things myself.
So I was hitting the library. I did not know anything about mental illness, the suffering they went through, the stage of things, and how to approach someone. There wasn’t a whole lot back then would apply to my situation working on that bridge, you know, this close, close, face-to-face…someone’s life is at risk, right now.
I had done a couple of news article and then I started getting requests to go out and speak….I wanted to show folks in a relatively easy way that if we see somebody hurting, struggling – how can we approach and talk to them so we can have the courage to do that but also make them feel at ease?
Find out more of Kevin’s story by listening to the whole episode at Muse Storytelling: http://bit.ly/TrafficCop_GuardianGGB
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