Conference encourages talk about seriousness of suicide.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

If there were signs their daughter was suicidal, Tim and Darlene Baker missed them.

Jennifer Baker was into athletics and "a great kid - no trouble," said her mother, Darlene Baker.

On a Thursday in April 1997, she gave a note to a friend at Pleasant Hill High School that said, "If I'm not here on Monday, I'm dead - no joke." The note was passed around at a baseball game and wound up under the stands. Jennifer Baker killed herself on Monday. She was 16.

"Kids didn't take it seriously," Darlene Baker said. "No one did anything. No one told their parents or school counselors."

Making suicide part of the conversation between children and their parents is one goal of a conference planned Saturday in Springfield.

The local conference is part of the sixth annual National Survivors of Suicide Day, sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. A live national broadcast will be part of the Springfield event, which is sponsored by Looking Glass Youth and Family Services, the Jennifer Baker Fund, state Sen. Vicki Walker and PeaceHealth.

Another primary goal of the conference is to establish a suicide survivors bereavement support group, said Jill Hollingsworth, program coordinator and prevention specialist at Looking Glass.

"Survivors of suicide face some obstacles that are somewhat different than the loss of a loved one from natural causes," she said. Oftentimes survivors feel guilt and anger. "It's a different type of loss. It's like a chaos."

Since their daughter's death, the Bakers have worked on suicide prevention and education and trying to get people to talk about suicide. Students get drug prevention education and sex education, and since the Thurston and Columbine school shootings, they know to tell an adult if another student brings a gun to school. But no one talks to them about suicide, Darlene Baker said.

"People have to know this is something they have to talk about with their kids," she said.

That's starting to happen with a program called SAFE-TEEN. SAFE stands for Suicide Awareness for Everyone. The program is a comprehensive approach that trains staff, students and parents to identify and find help for youths who are depressed or suicidal.

The program has been at North Eugene and Marist high schools, as well as Northwest Youth Corps' Outdoor High School, since 2003.

This year, six other high schools will take part in the program: Sheldon, Churchill, Kalapuya, Springfield and Thurston high schools and Gateways Learning Center.

Baker said her daughter did not appear depressed and wasn't having problems in school.

"My daughter didn't know she could come talk to me," she said. "If you are talking with your kids about it, they will feel comfortable."

SUICIDE SURVIVORS

The local National Survivors of Suicide Day conference takes place from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the PeaceHealth RiverBend Annex (formerly the Sony disc plant), 123 International Way, Springfield.

For more information or to register, call 747-2087. The registration fee is on a sliding scale, from $10 to $20, though no one will be turned away if they can't pay.

On the Web, go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at: www.afsp.org.