QPR training is a workshop designed to help you, as a regular person, reach out and help those within your circle of contact, with the goal of preventing suicide. Much like CPR, the purpose is not to “save” a person entirely, but to administer help and support until they can access professional help.
The format is basically: Question (ask: “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”), Persuade (get them to agree to get help), and Refer (take them to or give them the means of getting professional help).
I recommend the training. No one wants to be in the situation where their family, friends or acquaintances are considering suicide, but much less do people want to be in the situation where their close ones complete it. No one really wants to be at the scene of an accident just to flex their first-aid training, but the point is: these things happen. It is good to have some way of proactively helping and dealing with the situation than feeling helpless and wishing you could do something. We are not perfect people and we are not expected to rescue anyone on our own, but we are people, and as such, we are connected to one another and are one another’s support network by our simple existence.
I got my CPR training from UBC’s Red Cross on campus last year, and I daresay they are running the training again this year.
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