FORT SILL, Okla.-- As part of the Army's suicide prevention stand down, the Fort Sill Army Substance Abuse Program conducted Walk for Life training Sept. 27 at the Welcome Center.
Walk for Life was an opportunity to heighten awareness for Soldiers, civilians, families and the community about suicide threat factors, about the resources available and about building resiliency across the force.
Five training stations provided mini resiliency sessions where attendees could learn problem solving technics; human energy and stress management; Ask, Care, Escort (ACE) training; conflict resolution and cognitive behavioral therapy.
ASAP focuses on resiliency efforts through programs like Walk for Life, and injects itself at stressors points, said Jay Khalifeh, ASAP program manager. Stressors include financial problems, relationship issues and pending disciplinary actions.
Walk for Life was planned to be an outdoor event at 3-Mile Track, but had to be moved indoors because of the rain. Counselors, social workers and clinicians from ASAP provided five sessions of each topic during the two-hour event.
About 60 people sat in on the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy class in the basement of Building 4700. Instructors described how an activating event produces a thought, and how that thought leads to a behavior, said Fran Alltizer, ASAP clinical director.
"We teach participants to look at the thoughts that are activated by events to see if they're real or just something they believe not based on truth," she said. And, how one can they look at their thoughts and change their beliefs about what they think, so that their behavior changes.
On the first floor, dozens of participants listened to a presentation on problem solving.
The Army suicide prevention campaign "Shoulder-to-Shoulder, We Stand Up for Life" goes beyond Soldiers and Fort Sill's fence line Khalifeh said.
"We're all Lawtonians, and we're all working together to make it a better community," he said.
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