LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. -- Team Little Rock focused their efforts on community connection and support for the well-being of Airmen, civilians, and family members to spread awareness during Suicide Awareness month, September 2025.
Resources on base including the Integrated Resilience Office, Equal Opportunity and True North aimed to reinforce overall base resilience through spreading awareness and hosting classes on proper response to the risks of suicide.
“We build rock solid lives by proactively enhancing community well-being through evidence-based strategies,” said Joshua Barry, 19th Airlift Wing Integrated Resilience Office chief. “We’re engaging the whole community, empowering leaders with evidence, research, and data so they can make data driven decisions.”
One of the classes hosted by the Integrated Resilience Office is Suicide Alertness For Everyone (SAFE Talk), which promotes conversation to support the community with an emphasis on suicide prevention. For those looking for a more in-depth class, they could look to the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), which is a two-day workshop with a standardized curriculum to develop more skills.
“[ASIST] teaches participants to recognize when someone may have thoughts of suicide, to discuss suicide in a direct manner with that person, and how to intervene and work with the person to create a plan that supports their immediate safety,” Barry said.
Barry also emphasized that these life-saving skills are especially vital given how widespread suicide-related experiences can be. He explained that without understanding the issue, people may easily underestimate the value of intervention training and its informative course content.
“There’s anywhere from five to 25% more suicides that are unreported,” Barry said. “The biggest statistic that I really pulled out of when we went through the ASIST course was one in 20, so that’s 5% of the people who we interact with have had thoughts of suicide at some point in their life.”
Between April 2020 and August 2021, 88% of people who called the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) reported that the call helped prevent them from taking their own life.
The classes are hosted at The Kenny in the Walters Community Center and equip community members with proper response and care to teammates or family members showing thoughts of suicide.
“It talks about ‘ask, care, and escort,’ (ACE) talks about ‘Go SLO,’ safes, locks and outside the home,” Barry said.
ACE educates participants on symptoms and warning signs of suicide while Go SLO which adds barriers between the individual with suicidal ideations and their access to weapons, medications or other forms of harm. The acronyms help individuals by simplifying the steps that provide support to another person.
While focusing on the power of direct, compassionate intervention, the importance was also highlighted in normalizing the pursuit for support and pointing people to available resources on base.
“One of the big things that we want to really home in on with our messaging on suicide prevention, is it’s okay to get help,” said Margarita Overton, 19th AW Integrated Resilience and Response director. “There’s places on this installation or within our community that can help you with those things.”