Blog 21: Exit Interview

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

• What is the most effective way to help prevent suicidal thoughts?

• Being able to communicate the way you feel can help prevent an unwanted event.

• Creating a diary to write down all of the feelings you can not verbally say. 

• Making a daily schedule helps have ones goals present & prevent unplanned obstacles, for example suicidal thoughts, come in between. 

• My best answer is my first answer, ”Being able to communicate the way you feel can help prevent an unwanted event" because as many say, communication is key. Being able to communicate your feelings can help you get different point of views from different people. I made my answer official after reading the book, The Inner World of a Suicidal Youth written by Millie Osborne. Dr Osborne mentions in her book that although "Electra" the character of the story, would receive everything she wanted, she never received the therapy she needed and wasn't able to express her emotions, which lead her to commit suicide.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

The process I took was doing outside research, besides research check. I attempted to go to mentorship every time I had possible. Mentoring two little girls that were in elementary school made it semi difficult for me to go for more than an hour and a half once a week. The time that I actually had with them I tried to use it as wisely as possible. I tried to get them to talk to much as much as I could. They started to get more and more attached to me the same way I did with them. In fact they told me once that their therapist advised them to keep a diary, but for them they preferred to talk to me.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

I had difficulty trying to decide what my best answer would be. I feel that all of my answers are actually pretty good that choosing between the three was very difficult. The way I resolved it was trying to look at different research that I have previously done and came to the conclusion that both my research and hands on work, lead to being able to communicate your feelings to others for it never to become to late.

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

The most significant sources is the book The Inner World of a Suicidal Youth by Dr Millie Osborne and my mentor Patricia Azevedo. Dr Millie Osborne is a writer along with a masters in Psychology. Patty has been in the psychology field for more than 30 years. She has an administrators credential, two masters, one in educational psychology and one in counseling, and lastly she has a license as a family and marriage therapist. Her position at the moment is a mental health psychologist at the Pomona District. Both the book and my mentor taught me to be able to live a mentally healthy life you have to be able to communicate the way you feel. By keeping things in just makes the ball grow bigger and bigger, that at the point that you want to stop it yourself, it becomes impossible.