Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Baker Lake (Apr 05/00) - The hamlet of Baker Lake has taken a proactive approach in addressing serious problems in the community.

Mental health worker Barb Muller says Baker's Interagency Group recently conducted a five-part local radio series addressing suicide awareness and prevention, parenting skills and drug and alcohol addiction.

Participants in the series included the RCMP, health centre nurse-in-charge and community health representative Judy Miller and Simeon Mikkungwak from Social Services, Joan Kashla from the Mianiqisijit Sexual Abuse Project and Mary Kreelak and Jenny Mariq from the Tunganiq Addictions Project.

"The first show was on suicide prevention and awareness," says Muller.

"We received a good response from the community. Quite a few elders phoned in, encouraging people to go and talk to find help."

Two shows dealt with discipline versus abuse after interagency members became aware of a lack of parenting skills in the community.

Muller says too many kids wander around the community, and parents are unaware of their whereabouts.

"We often hear parents are scared to discipline their kids because the kids will go to Social Services, so we did segments on the differences between discipline and abuse.

"We also had a couple of sexual assaults happen in our community recently. The kids involved became suicidal because they didn't disclose what had happened, so we did a whole show on date rape.

"The Addiction Project staff did a show on alcohol and drug abuse. A lot of people who are suicidal attempt it when they're drunk."

The Interagency Group calls the focus on suicide prevention A Secret That Can Be Broken.

Muller says the biggest gain made to date is that people are talking.

"Many times people will tell their friends they're suicidal, but ask them not to tell anybody. We can't stress to them enough that it's OK to break that secret when a life may hang in the balance."

The group is also heavily focused on getting community members to take a more proactive stance in dealing with local problems.

"The problem with most professionals is that they're here for a short time and when they leave their program goes with them.

"We want to get the community more involved in taking responsibility so programs will continue. We've started a suicide survivors group which we would eventually like to see being facilitated by community people."