TRAUMA and Moral Injury Specialist/Expert Sharmin Prince, hosted a suicide- prevention workshop on Thursday at the National Library, where 25 persons earned certificates.

Though Prince was the facilitator, the certificates and materials used were from US based Organisation, LivingWorks, which owns a workshop called safeTALK.

The safe in safeTALK stands for suicide alertness for everyone, and the programme aims to teach persons how to prevent suicide by recognising signs, engaging someone, and connecting them to an intervention resource for further support.

This was the first safeTALK workshop that was ever held in Guyana.

Prince is a certified safeTALK trainer for which she is using her knowledge and skillset to benefit persons here in her home country.

She said that trauma has become a norm in the Guyanese society and her skills can be an asset to Guyana. Prince is a suicide surviver.

At the training, she said that oftentimes persons miss, dismiss or avoid suicidal invitations. However, the training equipped the attendees on how to detect the invitations and the necessary course of action to take following detection.

“Seeing domestic violence and the prevalence of it and because we have such a high suicide rate, I think suicide-prevention training is definitely needed. We are desensitised because of oversaturation. People are just desensitised about others’ feelings. We don’t care anymore about others the way we used to. We are no longer our brother’s and sister’s keeper. Also, what contributes to that is our own trauma. We are seeing life through a trauma lens and we always highlight men are killing women, but why? I can help with helping boys and men to understand the impact of their trauma,” Prince said.

“As a trainer, I bought the safeTALK booklets because I wanted to offer the training. I spent 20 years in the US, and I’m here because I feel that my skills are more needed in Guyana. There are a lot of [persons like] me in the US, but not a lot in Guyana, and I think I can be more effective. So I resigned from my job, I left there as a director of programme services, and decided to come here for three months to see if it is something that I can do. I’m trying to put all the skills I have acquired over the past 20 years, to work in Guyana,” Prince said.

Outlining some of her skillsets, Prince had previously told the Guyana Chronicle that she is the holder of a Diploma in Social Work from the University of Guyana, a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, and a Master’s Degree in Organisational Leadership. She is a dissertation away from a PhD in Psychology.

In addition to her academic achievements, Prince said she migrated to the US in 1999 and worked at volunteers of America for 18 years and functioned from the entry level all the way to the executive.

During that time, she further qualified herself in several areas of specialty.

“I’ve done moral injury from 2017-2019, and I participated in a research or a study that was done on veterans in the US who saw combat, and we used a technique called ‘Resilience Strength Training’ to help veterans to overcome their moral injury and it was a two-year study. So coming out of the 20 years I spent in the US, I’m a safeTALK trainer, a resilience strength-training trainer, case management trainer, leadership and teamwork trainer, and the list goes on,” Prince said.

Functioning under her newly founded organisation ‘Royalty Coaching and Consultancy Inc’, this is the first initiative executed by Prince.