Tuesday, April 19th at the Owasso High School’s Ram Cafe at 7pm.
The Brandon Magalassi Memorial Scholarship Foundation‘s mission is to promote suicide awareness through scholarships and education by addressing issues in the community that can end in suicide. They have no paid staff or administrative costs, and operate with volunteers dedicated to their cause. Since their founding in 2004, they have awarded $64,000 in scholarships to Owasso area high school seniors. They’re devoted to providing education to youth and adults in the form of activities that promote suicide awareness and prevention.
Each year they host the Shadow “Run” Suicide Prevention Symposium to educate the community about suicide awareness and prevention. The 2016 symposium theme is “Suicide Prevention in Action”. Guest Speaker, Mike Brose, Executive Director of Mental Health Association Oklahoma, will discuss how you can actively prevent suicide on a broad spectrum, including community and school based prevention programs to prevention at an individual level. Joining Mr. Brose will be local school staff to discuss what suicide prevention in action looks like and how it works in their school.
A life cut short is a story unfinished! Did you know that the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services reports that suicide is the second leading cause of death, behind accidents, of young people aged 10 to 24? The American Association of Suicidology reports that for 2013, Oklahoma had 665 suicides and ranked 17th in deaths per capita compared to other states. The Oklahoma Medical Examiner reports show that between 2006 and 2010, 32 people under the age of 20 died by suicide in Tulsa County. That’s too many young people in our community that have a story unfinished!
