On Friday September 22, 2023, PSRC Early College High School held it’s first Suicide Prevention assembly for students, staff and visitors. This program was the vision of one of our very own 11th grade students, Emma Hinson. Her ambition was to create a program where everyone gained a greater understanding of the impact of suicide and importance to ask for help.
During Suicide awareness week, Hinson felt a strong need to spread awareness so she spoke with school administration about putting together a program and was given the green light. Therefore, the entire program was organized, planned and executed by an 11th grade student who saw a need for knowledge to be shared in hopes to save lives in the future. Hinson enlisted the help of Christian McArthur (choir) and Gavin Deese (duet with Hinson) along with other students, helping in the background, to make the program a great success.
Hinson secured the guest speaker of the powerful program, Teen Miss Americas United States/Teen Miss NC Poultry Jubilee Madelyn Evans. Evans has used her pageant platform “Hope you’re okay” to spread awareness to schools all across north and south carolina by sharing her story and discussing more in depth about the warning signs, causes, and statistics of suicide.
When Hinson spoke about why she was driven to raise awareness she stated, “when I first got the idea of planning a program like this, I got to thinking about how most times when you go to suidice awareness programs, most of it is all statistics. While those statistics are very important, I wanted to focus more on the prevention side of things. We all know what suicide is but not all of us know how to stop it.” Emma closed her comments to the students with a powerful message: “Let's stop hiding from each other behind a mask and start showing what’s truly going on under the surface. And instead of judging or being uncomfortable or embarrassed, let's lift each other up! Because after all, we’re just a bunch of scared people trying our best to figure out the ups and downs of life.” PSRC Early College is very proud of Emma and her hard work on making her vision to spread suicide prevention awareness a reality.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: call or text 988 Or visit https://988lifeline.org/
