Keystone AEA partners with NEIA Behavioral Health to provide Lifelines Suicide Prevention curriculum to area school districts

Keystone Area Education Agency (AEA) is partnering with Northeast Iowa Behavioral Health to offer Lifelines suicide prevention curriculum to all 23 school districts in the Keystone area. This mental health professional development opportunity for school counselors and educators is centered around The Complete Lifelines Trilogy of Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention programs.

Lifelines is a whole-school program that educates administrators, faculty and staff, parents and students on the facts about suicide and their roles in suicide prevention, intervention and postvention. The goals of Lifelines are to increase the likelihood that members of the school community can more readily identify potentially suicidal adolescents, know how to initially respond to them, know how to rapidly obtain help for them, and to make troubled adolescents aware of and have immediate access to helping resources and seek such help as an alternative to suicidal actions.

Funds for the 23 Lifeline kits, valued at $466 each, were raised by Northeast Iowa Behavioral Health during its second annual "Step Up and Reach Out Suicide Awareness Walk". Keystone AEA and its trained Crisis Response Team appreciate this partnership with the Northeast Iowa Behavioral Health. The Lifelines training will be held November 29 at the Keystone AEA office located in Elkader.