City of Franklin, Mayor, Dr. Ken Moore answers five questions about the initiative Find Hope Franklin.
- What is Find Hope Franklin?
As Mayor of Franklin since 2008, I have always put an emphasis on health, both physical and mental. Being a former Orthopedic Surgeon, and helping to provide health care services worldwide, I have a passion for helping others. A few years ago, I put together a blue-ribbon panel to find out how we can prevent suicides in our city and county. What came out of the panel is Find Hope Franklin. The group behind this organization is made up of professionals and interested citizens that came together with a facilitator to try to boil down what we thought we should be doing in our community. So, we created a website with the very best resources in our community.
- I understand Find Hope Franklin received a grant to help train the community to recognize suicide warning signs. Tell us about that.
That initiative is called QPR training. This training is Question, Persuade and Refer suicide prevention training. Through the efforts of Franklin Tomorrow, we were awarded a grant to train local leaders who will then train our community members in this basic, suicide prevention tactic. I like to say if you know CPR, you also need to know QPR. Our goal is to train a significant portion of our community in QPR. Go to findhopefranklin.com/qpr/ to schedule a training for your office, neighborhood, or group.
- It can be difficult to find mental health resources. How can our community learn more about what Franklin has to offer?
I know there are lots of good mental health resources in Franklin. And I would urge citizens to go to our website, www.findhopefranklin.com and look at the resources we have listed. There are resources to help refer you to mental health professionals, there are resources to help you gauge what you may think is going on, a type of self-evaluation test. There are emergency numbers for those in crisis. Most importantly Find Hope Franklin puts an emphasis on the importance for people to be able to talk about mental health and suicide prevention and to know where those resources are.
- Who is behind Find Hope Franklin?
The group is made up of a very diverse group of people, such as Amy Alexander from The Refuge Center, we have Cindy Siler from Mercy Health Care who provides a lot of counseling to our community. Our Police Chief, Deb Faulkner is also a part of the group. We have people from the faith community, we have counselors from the school system, both Williamson County Schools and Franklin Special School District. We also have public relations professionals helping us to get the message out.
- What is your biggest goal with Find Hope Franklin?
We want to raise awareness about mental health needs in our community. We want to reduce the stigma of talking about it with friends, family and health professionals. If we can prevent one suicide, it’s worth it! We thank the Williamson Source for recognizing the importance of talking about mental health and sponsoring a monthly article from Find Hope Franklin to open the discussions with our community and share our important resource www.findhopefranklin.com.
