Whitehall® Announces Donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Kristin Kahle, right, and her cousin at a recent AFSP event in support of the fight against suicide

Death by suicide is a national crisis. In 2020, more than 45,000 Americans died by suicide, according to provisional data from the U.S. Department of Vital Statistics—a statistic that is may seem bleak but represents a hopeful trend, as this would represent a 3% decline in completed suicides as compared to the data from 2019.

Unfortunately, it is common enough that nearly everyone’s life has been touched by suicide in some way. Whitehall Vice President Kristin Kahle says that she often hears personal stories when she leads workshops on ways to reduce risk in healthcare settings, and this is one of the reasons why Whitehall focuses so strongly on the BestCare^® ligature-resistant product line. “Everyone has a story,” says Kahle.

Kahle also has her own story to share. She and her family were recently heartbroken when a local teenager—a close friend and baseball teammate of her cousin’s teenage child—died by suicide. She has also seen her own teenage children struggle with social pressures due to the pandemic. The pandemic has affected everyone, but the mental health struggles have hit youths especially hard as their support systems and routines have been disrupted at critical points in their young lives.

There is nothing that can heal the tragedy of a child’s premature death, but Kahle is committed to doing everything she can to prevent further lives being lost to suicide. For this reason, Whitehall has donated $5,000 to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Suicide prevention requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses not only the need for safety in a moment of crisis, but also the root causes that lead an individual to consider ending their own life. “We are trying to reduce suicide risks, but also create awareness,” Kahle says. Supporting the AFSP is one more way for Whitehall Manufacturing to fulfill this goal and create hope for the future.