Suicide Prevention and Survival
March 31, 2015
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
How do individuals and families survive after the suicide of a relative or close friend? How can some suicides be prevented? These will be our topics of discussion. When Carl David was only sixteen, his brother Bruce, age 22, committed suicide. Bruce’s unexpected death tore the David family apart. There were too many questions unanswered and seemingly too much hurt to bear. The family had to learn to fight, stay strong, and choose life. Suicide claims more than a million lives each year. It knows no boundaries -- not age, gender, color, race, or nationality. Its victims are pulled down by depression, disease, sexual confusion, bullying, peer pressures, drugs, feelings of desperation, and/or deep feelings of inadequacy. Teens and young adults are especially vulnerable. Mr. David will discuss his book “Bader Field: How My Family Survived Suicide,” which he hopes will help others cope with depression and suicidal tendencies and not apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Family Matters
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Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.