QPR sorta like CPR
One of the youth counselors and the youth pastor at my church arranged for QPR training this morning. Happily my 15 year old daughter readily agreed to go with me, thus ensuring that I did not change my mind at the last minute and decide to waste away a Saturday morning on coffee and newspaper instead.
It was really excellent training! The trainers were Melanie Hale and her husband, Robert Hale, both LCSWs working with the QPR Institute. They took the painful subject of suicide and broke it down into pieces we could handle and then taught us how to Question, Persuade, and Refer a person (QPR) in order to (hopefully) derail them from the process leading to suicide.
QPR training does not make you into a mental health professional, just like CPR training does not make you into a paramedic. In both cases, the experience of practicing is the most valuable part of the training. It is one thing to understand the steps in theory, it is another to actually do the steps, even if “doing” in the case of QPR means role-playing in a scenario handed to you on a piece of paper.
Even in that contrived setting, we found ourselves reluctant (scared) to ask any form of the direct question: are you thinking about killing yourself? We don’t want to insult the person, we don’t want to make them angry, we imagine such a question might make them worse (a myth), and we really don’t want them to say why yes, as a matter a fact, I am! But as the trainers asked, what would be worse: any of those things, including pissing off your friend/colleague/acquaintance/loved one, or having them be dead?
And, them saying “yes” just means it is a good thing you took that QPR training because now you know what to do next. Just like with CPR, there is no guarantee that you will save a life. But there is a good chance that you will.
What do the letters QPR stand for?
Sorry – I’ll bold them in the phrase Question, Persuade, Refer.
Thanks for a thoughtful review/synopsis of the training. As far as the last line of the post — there is no guarantee that you will save a life, but now at least you can. You now have another tool in your toolbox. thanks for being a part of this.