The Monroe County Coalition for Drug-Free Communities returned from a summer hiatus last week, their first meeting of the school year featuring a guest speaker discussing mental health and suicide prevention.

Chris Allard, founder and executive director of The Tenth Man, spoke about the organization and his personal relationship with mental health.

Allard told the story of his brother, Jon. In September 2018, their mother was undergoing cancer treatments and Allard had returned home to Belleville after living in Texas for some time.

He spent time with his brother then, particularly getting Jon’s help unpacking.

One day, Jon left work in the middle of the day to stop by, speak with Allard and say goodbye to their mother before going on a walk.

Allard ultimately heard from a deputy that Jon had been found dead. Meeting with officers, Allard then had to contend with informing his parents and Jon’s family.

He recalled how Jon left a letter describing his pain, the sense of suffocation he felt and the depression he dealt with. A key part of that letter was Jon’s request that his brother raise awareness about this kind of suffering.

This was the start of The Tenth Man organization, which earned its name from the unofficial title Jon had in his legal work.

“It mean’s devil’s advocate or alternative voice,” Allard said. “When the legal team had consensus that they were gonna try one of these cases in a particular way, they actually turned to my brother and said, ‘Hey Tenth Man, poke holes in our case and in our theory. Give us a different way to think about this.’ And that’s when the light bulb went off over my head. I was like, that’s exactly what my brother needed in all these days, months and even years leading up to that fateful day in September. He needed a tenth man to tell him that the path he was going down toward suicide was not the right path.”

Allard further discussed how his organization really landed on their mission of helping individuals find the assistance they need.

As he described, a big wake-up call came early on in the organization’s life as one individual with a crisis called their number looking for help, and Allard wasn’t sure of how to properly take care of the situation.

Though he was ultimately able to direct them to the resources they needed, the incident helped him recognize what The Tenth Man should really be doing.

“That put us down the path,” Allard said. “We really have to get our act together and understand what resources we have to reach out to confidentially and get people into the help that they need immediately, confidentially. And our main focus is, if there’s a gap in their ability to pay, which there often is, then we can fill that gap.”

He spoke more about some of the organization has done, particularly noting how they advocated for the 988 suicide and crisis hotline as well as having that number printed on the back of school IDs in the state.

Allard discussed some of what the good work The Tenth Man has been able to do, partnering with various organizations in the Belleville area and beyond so the folks who reach out to them can get the help they need.

He also offered insight into how individuals might be able to serve a similar role when it comes to helping those close to them.

The kind of crisis individuals can find themselves in, he explained, tends to develop thanks to some ongoing struggle. A significant trauma or facing an especially difficult problem can then lead to a full crisis situation.

“It’s the collision of a couple things. There’s almost always some sort of underlying condition like depression, like anxiety,” Allard said. “But then it’s some other thing, some other life event, something along those lines that happens. People start to get tunnel vision, they cannot see a solution, and that’s where things go bad.”

Allard noted the importance of approaching someone during those moments of crisis and simply prompting a conversation, asking if the individual is OK or even going so far as to ask if the individual is, in fact, suicidal or having thoughts of self-harm.

He encouraged people to be candid, saying there is no indication that asking a question like that can have the adverse effect of causing someone to self-harm.

Allard further urged people to try and notice any signs that someone might be struggling like the language they use or a potentially poor financial situation. He referred to how Jon had never drank much but had begun drinking prior to his death.

Speaking on potential mental health work that could be done in Monroe County, he said he’d previously been in touch with new Regional Superintendent of Schools Ryan McClellan to discuss programming for local schools.

Allard said key points to express in these conversation’s with students are pushing them to recognize signs of mental health struggles both in themselves and in fellow classmates, considering changes in behavior or personality and reaching out to an adult when needed.

As he described, programming he’s done with teens in other schools has focused in some part on “seizing the awkward,” recognizing how difficult conversations about mental health can be but encouraging them to speak up and have those important talks regardless.

Beyond Allard’s presentation, those in attendance spoke about various goings-on in the coalition and the Operation Snowball groups in the county.

Coalition executive director Monica Kirkpatrick spoke positively about local attendance at the Cebrin Goodman Teen Institute over the summer, with big growth from the Columbia and Valmeyer Snowball groups and hope for Waterloo and Gibault to soon develop Snowball clubs of their own.

Further comments were made about increasing community participation and awareness of the coalition and how these Snowball students have done a great deal of planning for what they’d like to work on through this school year.

A youth survey also came up as a key topic in this discussion, with Kirkpatrick and HSS President and CEO Anne Riley noting some hurdles have been encountered in getting local school districts to participate in a new survey.

As previously reported, schools in Monroe County long participated in the Illinois Youth Survey which covers a range of topics mainly focused on drug and alcohol use.

Districts in this area stepped away from the survey in recent years, seemingly taking objection to questions on the survey pertaining to LGBTQ topics.

The coalition has since been in the process of organizing its own survey in order to collect data on local youth substance use trends.

Though students and parents would be able to opt out of participation in this anonymous survey and school districts would only have access to their own data along with aggregate data from the county as a whole, school districts in the county have seemingly been reticent to sign on.

“There just needs to be more education to the right people that can get this moved forward,” Kirkpatrick said.

For more information on the Monroe County Coalition for Drug-Free Communities, visit facebook.com/MonroeCountyILCoalition or call 618-910-0216.