Posts in News
Local Campaign Offers Hope in Opioid Crisis

Friday, April 7 is World Health Day, a day to increase awareness about health issues impacting people across the globe. While the focus of World Health Day is global, we would like to highlight a national and local public health issue–fentanyl and the opioid overdose crisis–and a new local campaign working to address it in Nevada County.

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Community is Key to Suicide Prevention - Idaho Catholic Register

“Although 90 percent of suicides are completed by someone with a mental illness, suicide isn’t always connected to a mental health struggle,” Decker said. Sometimes the causes are situational – bankruptcy, divorce, legal ramifications or job loss.

One source of protection for all people, whether or not they have mental illness, can be a faith community, she said. “The Church could be a protective factor if it is a place that is welcoming and forgiving, where people feel that they belong and have a sense of purpose,” Decker said.

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Working with Miss Idaho USA, Hannah Menzner

The Speedy Foundation is so excited and honored to announce our partnership with Hannah Menzner, the newly crowned Miss Idaho USA. Her deep passion for mental health stemmed from her experience volunteering for a crisis hotline, and she has since founded Project IdaHOPE to teach Idahoans to spot suicide warning signs and risk factors. We look forward to working alongside her as she continues her campaign for suicide awareness, and can’t wait to see the wonderful things she has in store this year!

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Breaking Point

According to CDC data, mountain destination mecca Wyoming has the highest suicide mortality rate in the country. Since 2015, states in the Interior West—Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho—have all also consistently ranked in the top ten for suicide death. The data is so marked that the Rocky Mountain states have been dubbed “the Suicide Belt.”

Why? The reasons are complicated and multifold.

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Suicide: When Someone is Too Bruised to be Touched

There is the horrific shock of losing a loved one so suddenly which, just of itself, can bring us to our knees; but, with suicide, there are other soul-wrenching feelings too, confusion, guilt, second-guessing, religious anxiety. Where did we fail this person? What might we still have done? What should we have noticed? What is this person’s state with God?

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Idaho Speakeasy: Shannon Decker & The Speedy Foundation

Shannon Decker is the Executive Director of the Speedy Foundation and the Idaho Suicide Prevention Coalition. The Speedy Foundation was started in 2011 in memory of Shannon’s cousin, Olympic Freestyle skier and three time Olympian, Jeret Peterson. Jeret died a year after the Vancouver Olympics in which he had taken home a silver medal for USA.

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The Morning Mix - February 8, 2019

The #Morning Mix returns this week after its 2-week Sundance hiatus with musical guest Shannon Runyon performing live in the Swede Alley studio, plus guest interviews with Shannon Decker, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Speedy Foundation, and with Aaron Benward, Creator and Producer of ‘Nashville Unplugged, The Story Behind The Song’, a listening room experience happening at The Rockwell Room on Valentines Day. These guests and a rundown of events happening in our area on The Morning Mix.

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Mental Health and Young Athletes

I have learned that tools for coping with my illness have come and gone and I know it will be ok. I still have setbacks and I have a recovery plan that I have shared with my therapist and my children so they can help me when I can’t remember why I am here and what tools I have.

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Amanda Lehto

I have had personal experience with mental health issues both with myself and my children. My expertise is in sharing my lived experience with individuals who need or want a positive view on the possibility of recovery with mental health and substance abuse. I too have a passion for working on my mental health issues and learning everyday from set backs I have had. It makes my recovery a priceless endeavor.

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Hannah Menzner

I am Miss Capital City! As part of my year of service, I am promoting my platform: Saving Lives: Preventing Suicide in our Youth and Young Adults. I have always been interested in suicide and mental health, but wanted to learn more about how to help so I dug right in.

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Nampa suicide prevention panel pushes for open discourse

Affected personally by suicides by some close to her, Shannon Decker, executive director of a mental health nonprofit called the Speedy Foundation, said she wishes she’d learned that sooner.

“I know for a fact that if I had been given direct instruction as a teenager, the same way I was given direct instruction in health class about every health issue, that I would have been equipped to ask these questions and potentially have saved some lives,” said Decker, whose cousin Olympic silver medalist Jeret “Speedy” Peterson died of suicide in 2011 and after whom the Speedy Foundation is named.

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