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CrisisLink LOSS Team
CrisisLink's LOSS Team offers immediate at-the-scene support and resources to individuals impacted by suicide or other forms of traumatic loss. LOSS team members can also meet with survivors in the first few days after a loss to help them cope with the frightening and often chaotic aftermath of such events, and to offer them hope and guidance for the healing process to come.
Our LOSS Team is based on the pioneering model developed by The Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center, and now being implemented successfully elsewhere both in the United States and abroad. The Team consists of crisis center staff, volunteers, and survivors, and coordinates with law enforcement to provide this vital support, which is critical in helping to help stabilize survivors and to ensure that they are connected to community resources. In doing so, the Team helps to minimize the chance that these survivors will experience prolonged, unresolved trauma or will themselves become victims of suicide:
"I got a call last night at midnight, that a young man, a college student, had shot and killed himself in his apartment, and I went out there for a few hours and did what I could for his roommate who had found him and was big-time distraught. A tough scene. Four years ago this young man's dad had killed himself, and according to the roommate and others there, this had weighed heavily on his mind, had actually eaten him up on the inside, and he had no one to talk to or help him with his feelings. Had this LOSS Team and its immediate response been in place four years ago, and this young man had been talked to and had gotten into some help and support, he may not have been where he was last night, cold and alone and dead by his own hand, so full of pain and hopelessness and self-hatred." -- Mark Wilson, LOSS Team Member who lost his father to suicide