A partnership in Carbon County is trying to help families with their LOSS from a suicide.

On Thursday, Coroner Mark Smith and Larissa Kimmel, systems of care coordinator for Carbon-Monroe-Pike Mental Health/Developmental Services, announced the creation of the Local Outreach of Suicide Survivors or LOSS team.

“This is going to be a wonderful resource so that we can prevent further suicide losses as a result of the contagion that occurs afterwards,” Kimmel said. The LOSS team involves two or more trained volunteers who provide survivors with support, a connection to resources and a way to grieve.

Members meet, listen to and support bereaved loved ones, whether it be in a person’s home, over the phone or at a public location. The team sets out at the request of the coroner’s office.

Kimmel said that the LOSS team is currently looking for volunteers and will be holding a virtual open house via Zoom at 4 p.m. on Oct. 21.

“You might be curious and this is an opportunity to learn more,” she said.

To sign up for the virtual open house, people can email Kimmel at larissa.kimmel@cmpsystemsofcare.org or call 570-350-0585 to receive a link or phone number to participate.

Following the open house, a volunteer training program will take place on Nov. 23. Additional details will be made available closer to the open house.

In addition to the new team, Smith and Kimmel has been working on creating a Suicide Fatality Review Team, which is designed to look at an individual’s suicide and break down what led to the event, were there warning signs, the person’s history and more.

“This could offer a little bit of an insight as to what happened,” Kimmel said, adding that the person’s identity is kept confidential during the process. “The information is used by the team to identify what are the risk factors and where we all could have stepped in to prevent an event like this from occurring.”

The review team will then be able to formulate action items to dispense to the community to help create a safety net to save lives.

Kimmel also announced that Carbon-Monroe-Pike Mental Health/Developmental Services has been named a subrecipient of a federal grant for use on suicide prevention.

The organization is following the Garrett Lee Smith Program which aims at youth suicide prevention.

Through this program, MH/DS will look at creating a Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality response program to help youth who may be struggling with suicidal thoughts.

“We are able to get them immediately into an outpatient type service that will either review them from being hospital or support them after stabilization in hospitalization,” Kimmel said of the five-year project.