Mount Wachusett Community College (MWCC) said it will receive about $74,000 from the state to train Heywood Hospital employees in Gardner in suicide prevention techniques.
The college will train 730 doctors, nurses and other health care workers in techniques aimed at reducing the region’s suicide rate, which is reaching epidemic proportions, according to Heywood CEO Win Brown. The concept of the training is to increase the likelihood that a hospital patient considering suicide will encounter an intervention within the health care system.
According to 2008 state data, Gardner and the five communities that abut it had 10 suicides out of a total of 483 total deaths, or .02 percent. The state’s suicide rate that year was .009 percent.
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