Q&A with the Experts: Maggie Bertram

Hygieia offers specialized services to enhance your organizations’ ability to prevent and respond to suicide risks. Our interdisciplinary team includes mental health, public health, anthropology, sociology, non-profit management, policy, and communications specialists trained as scientists, administrators, and practitioners.  Meet Maggie Bertram, a learning and development specialist, executive coach, and facilitator specializing in design thinking, innovation, and emerging technology in a professional services environment.

1. Can you recall a specific event or moment that shifted your perspective on suicide prevention?

   
   

   I wasn’t especially aware of suicide prevention until I became a residence hall director at a small college in 2006. In that role, I served in a collateral position with the campus counseling and mental health services, which put me in charge of student health programming as well as the student committee leading peer education on campus. The demand for mental health information and programming was overwhelming, and I began to hear more stories from students about losing friends from home to suicide, contemplating suicide themselves, and the lack of honest discussion about mental health issues. In particular, one of the student staff members I worked with lost her best friend to suicide during her junior year. Being witness to her pain and desperation to understand why he’d done it was significant to me. It makes my heart ache even today. Later that year, we lost a student to suicide on campus. I left for graduate school determined to do work that would prevent suicide on campus and get more students access to help.

   
   

2. What are some of the most overlooked aspects of suicide prevention that you feel are critical to understanding it fully?

   
   

   The political answer:

   
   

   I think we’ve gotten better about messaging the immediate precursors to suicide, and a growing number of people are aware of the warning signs that might indicate a loved one is considering suicide. Where we still have work to do is in the days, weeks, months, and even years where mental distress and/or mental illness builds toward suicide. We need to create more community mental health care options for folks so that when we recognize signs of distress and ill mental health, there are treatment services immediately available. We also need to address causes of acute distress such as bullying, harassment, and assault, which may also lead people to contemplate suicide. In particular, there’s a lot of work to be done to limit how perpetrators use social media and AI to bully and harass individuals who ultimately take their own lives.

   
   

   The less popular answer:

   
   

   When we can limit the means of suicide, we can prevent suicide. As Americans, we don’t like to talk about this, but we have to be willing to take firearms away from people at risk for suicide. In 2022, firearms accounted for nearly 55% of suicide all deaths in the US according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Common sense legislation regulating firearm access for people with mental illness already exists in some states, but there’s still a lot of work to do both in terms of policy and enforcement.

   
   

3. In your opinion, how has public perception of suicide prevention evolved over time, and where do you think it will go in the future?

   
   

   There was a whole half of my life when suicide either wasn’t talked about at all or it was a punchline. Suicide is still often used as a punchline in TV and movies, but we are starting to see more ubiquity when it comes to sharing resources in media when themes of suicide are addressed. The migration of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to the simple “988” has made it easier to include a streamlined statement at the ends of articles, podcasts, and TV shows to point people where to get help.

   
   

   As for the future, it’s difficult to say. Gen Z is definitely showing a willingness to talk openly about mental health and suicide on social media. My hope is that this will translate into an overall reduction in the shame and stigma associated with suicide, and more resources for prevention, intervention, and postvention will follow.

   
   

4. What is one thing you believe society as a whole could do better in addressing suicide prevention?

   
   

   I think we can expand programs that teach the warning signs of suicide, how to talk about it, and where to get help. Schools have created a great roadmap for this over the last couple of decades, and we could be more intentionally targeting additional community spaces such as workplaces, faith communities, community centers, and even online communities. In fact, I think there’s a big opportunity for video game developers and gamer communities to come together to engrain more suicide prevention in the world-making of the games.

   
   

   I also think technology could have a critical role to play, but we are still early days. Currently, we’re hearing stories of the detrimental effects of AI and humans’ weaponization of AI to exacerbate individuals’ mental health. We’ve seen the reports of people dying by suicide as a result of these attacks. I hope in the future we can use AI for the benefit of folks’ mental health and to actually prevent deaths by suicide by interrupting bullying and harassment, recognizing warning signs, encouraging people to seek help, and even notifying emergency services when necessary.

   
   

---

Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for immediate, confidential support from trained counselors who provide immediate crisis intervention and mental health resources. 

For LGBTQ+ youth, The Trevor Project offers help at 1-866-488-7386. 

Remember, you're not alone, and trained professionals are ready to listen and help.