|
|
Magazine interview
Las Vegas City Life -
a weekly publication distributed throughout Las Vegas, Nevada
May 8, 2008
http://lasvegascitylife.com
Distributed throughout Las Vegas, Nevada.
Dying for attention
One man's campaign of raising suicide
awareness has state officials raising eyebrows
by ANDREW KIRALY
PHOTO BY BILL HUGHES
Matthew Dovel, president of International
Suicide Prevention
WHAT QUALIFIES former cokehead,
alcoholic and drug courier Matthew Dovel as a suicide prevention
expert? Not a counseling degree. Not a psychiatry background. Not a
marriage and family therapy license. Nothing like that.
His credentials: Dovel tried to kill himself in 1987 with three
bottles of sleeping pills and a fifth of Beefeater gin. He's spent his
life since then talking to people about the warning signs of suicide,
counseling relatives of victims and connecting devastated families
with resources.
"I work on an experiential level," says Dovel, president of Las
Vegas-based International Suicide Prevention and author of My Last
Breath. "I didn't come from UNLV over here, saying, 'It says here
you're hiccupping so you must be suicidal.' You know what? I come from
the heart when I talk to people and they know that. They learn more
from my classes I teach, knowing I'm not there to get a paycheck, but
to help them learn to detect the warning signs better. It's not a
clinical class." Clinical or not, Nevada can use all the help it can
get. According to the latest statistics by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Nevada has the nation's second-highest annual
suicide rate at about 20 per 100,000 people, second only to Montana.
The state's suicide-prevention office only formed in 2003 and wasn't
funded until 2005.
At a recent interview about his suicide prevention campaign, Dovel is
wearing a pressed white shirt and slacks, but there's little that's
fastidious about his straight-talk approach to suicide. At a Dovel
presentation -- he says he's presented to everyone from soldiers to
students -- he talks about his hard-partying days in Anchorage,
Alaska, where in the '80s he developed a $1,000-a-week cocaine habit.
He talks about how a side gig running drugs for a bike gang led to a
plunge into addiction, despair and his suicide attempt. He talks about
how his near-death experience took him to hell -- complete with
demons, lightning and thunder.
He puts his hands to his chest. "I forgot to wear my pin."
Oh, the pin. The logo pin. International Suicide Prevention's logo is
a noose with a slash through it. It's provocative and eye-catching --
and it's certainly caught the eye of state suicide-prevention
officials. To them, it's not just insensitive. They say the logo, just
one part of Dovel's blunt style, threatens to backfire and perhaps
send someone contemplating suicide over the edge.
"We have no problem with Mr. Dovel's efforts and his concern for
preventing suicide," says Misty Allen, suicide prevention coordinator
with the Nevada Office of Suicide Prevention. "But there are
evidence-based protocols for doing this safely. People who are
suicidal are vulnerable, and we want to protect them from images or
media stories that might increase the risk of following through. When
you see a pin with a noose, that puts not only people who are suicidal
at risk, but people who have experienced the suicide of a loved one --
it sends them reeling. Not to mention the racial implications. The
noose just went too many places for me." Indeed, many
suicide-prevention organizations, such as the Massachusetts-based
Suicide Prevention Resource Center, warn against depicting methods of
suicide in campaigns. They say research shows it can spur on a
suicidal person to do the deed.
In a March 2007 letter, Linda Flatt of the Office of Suicide
Prevention even urged Dovel to abandon his noose image. "The image of
the noose is very insensitive to survivors of suicide loss --
especially those who have lost a loved one by hanging," she wrote.
"This seems to violate your mission to provide family support to those
who have lost a loved on by suicide. In addition, I strongly sense
that the pin would be considered a form of suicide contagion." Flatt
is on vacation and was not available for comment.
Months later, Dovel fired back a letter -- copying the mayor, the
attorney general and the governor -- alleging the state office had
"embarked on a malicious slander campaign" against him. Dovel and
state officials have since been politely ignoring each other, not
making referrals and not attending each others' events.
Dovel stands by the noose. "They claim the nooses we have are
propagating suicides," he says. "My take on it was, 'Hey, I wear this
pin as a way to initiate a conversation about something no one wants
to talk about.' People say, 'What the hell are you wearing a noose
for?' It has a slash through it and it says 'Stop suicide,' so it's
not like I'm wearing a noose."
The skirmish between Dovel and state officials is brewing over more
than just his controversial logo. His other methods might be
considered unorthodox as well. His "Happiness is a choice" workshop,
which covers alcohol abuse, drug addiction and suicide, draws heavily
on concepts such as neurolinguistic programming, a style of mental
pep-talking that's big with personal-power gurus (think Anthony
Robbins).
"When people see things in a certain light, we use words to have them
to start to see things in a different light," explains Stephen
Jenkins, a "subconscious retrainer" who advises Dovel. "Then you see
that a-ha moment in their head, that there's another way out of this
than suicide."
Former clients -- some of them now volunteers for International
Suicide Prevention -- have nothing but rave reviews of Dovel's
methods.
"He doesn't sugarcoat anything [in his presentations]. He's very
explicit and blunt, and you have to be when it comes to suicide," says
Lena Ocasio, a mortgage broker whose fiancé killed himself in August.
Ocasio says the police referred her to Dovel for counseling after the
death of fiancé. "He was amazing. He's a great listener, and he's very
compassionate. You can feel it in the tone of his voice." Ocasio has
since volunteered at events as a supporter of the group.
She also supports Dovel's recently launched campaign to start up a
charity fund for suicide scene cleanup, as Dovel contends that
families are stuck with the trauma -- and the bill -- of cleaning up
the scene after a family member commits suicide. Ocasio says she
herself had to pay. "After the police left, I was by myself. They gave
me a list of biohazard cleanup crews, and it cost me $1,700 just two
have two guys in white suits dispose of all the blood. Nobody offered
to help pay. Then I had to pay for the side of the house [to be
repaired]. It was almost $3,000 in damages." (A Metro police
spokesperson insists that in Clark County, suicide scene cleanup is
covered in the budget of the responding officer's department; family
members don't pay a dime.) In other cases, International Suicide
Prevention volunteers themselves have taken up mop and bucket in the
wake of a suicide. Volunteer Geoff Gallo says he's helped Dovel clean
up two different suicide scenes in the past three years.
"I think his cause is very noble," says Gallo. "I've seen him on the
phone for hours when we're out having a cup of coffee, and he's on the
phone the whole time. He's talking someone out of killing himself."
Like Dovel, Gallo dismisses state anti-suicide efforts. "They're
pretty useless. I've watched them for years, and they don't do
anything as far as I'm concerned. They have issues with him because he
tells it like it is. He speaks his mind."
That may be changing. Last year, the state launched a six-year suicide
prevention plan that hopes to lower our state's rank with an
aggressive awareness and training campaign. Allen suggests our high
suicide rate might have less to do with gambling and free-flowing
alcohol than with Nevada's legacy of rugged individualism. "Nevada is
a very independent, tough state," she says. "But I think that prevents
people from reaching out for help and also giving help."
As for the independent-minded Dovel, he's appreciative but skeptical
of the state's plan. "I teach from a practical perspective," he says.
"They teach from a book perspective."
|
