Hotline goes high profile in Southern Nevada

Cy Ryan And Shaunta Grimes

Thursday, Dec. 16, 1999 | 11:50 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A suicide prevention hotline that operates out of Reno will be stepping up its profile in Southern Nevada.

Misty Allen of the Crisis Call Center in Reno told a legislative committee on health care Tuesday that it will start advertising in the Las Vegas area. She said it will supplement, not compete with, the local suicide hotline in Southern Nevada.

The Reno operation now receives about 60 calls a month from Southern Nevada. It will promote its toll-free number of 877-885-4673.

Assemblywoman Ellen Koivisto, D-Las Vegas, told the committee that the Suicide Prevention Center of Clark County, the effort in Southern Nevada, has run out of money.

But Allen countered that the hotline is still operating.

"We need money and we will always need money," Dorothy Bryant, director of the Clark County center, said. "We are not closing our doors. We are stepping up for the holidays."

The Legislature allocated $98,000 a year to the Reno center for the suicide prevention program.

"We didn't get that grant -- they did -- and we would have liked it," Bryant said.

In October the Clark County center was so short of funds it was within weeks of closing, Bryant said. The center has been in operation for 30 years but does not have a regular fund-raising schedule.

"We're not good at fund-raising," Bryant said.

Bryant agreed with Allen that the two centers will not be in competition, but will supplement each other. The centers will reach more Southern Nevadans together than either one could alone, she said.

Nora Brashear, administrative coordinator for the Reno center, said 80 percent of the suicides in Nevada are white, middle-incomed males between 30 and 40 years old. But she said no one has any real information on what makes people take their own lives.

Koivisto said she wanted to know how the Reno center provides follow-up care for the people who call from Las Vegas. But Brashear said it provides only the emergency services of talking the person out of killing themselves. The follow-ups fall to other agencies in Southern Nevada.