Windy Boy's suicide prevention bill to be vehicle for state efforts

Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, said in an emailed release Thursday that his suicide prevention bill, House Bill 118, would be the vehicle used for suicide bills this legislative session.

That bill, which appropriates $500,000 for its programs, would create a suicide prevention program in the Department of Public Health and Human Services headed by a suicide prevention officer to create and coordinate programs to prevent suicides in the state.

Windy Boy wrote that, as the vehicle for suicide bills, his bill will include a $1 million allocation, and he is working to amend his bill to include other suicide prevention bills and include a suicide prevention plan developed by Kauffman Associates in an interim study created by a previous bill Windy Boy sponsored.

Windy Boy said he wants to include parts of his House Bill 117, which addresses suicides among veterans of the armed forces, parts of the bill he introduced at the request of Gov. Steve Bullock, House Bill 23, which sets a pilot program to address American Indian and rural youth suicides, and House Bill 590, which Windy Boy cosponsored, which provides grants to communities to fund suicide prevention efforts.

“I’m also considering putting an amendment on the bill, expanding it to ‘May also coordinate with other local prevention efforts,” he wrote.

Windy Boy said in an interview that an example of a local prevention effort with which the state could coordinate is the project at Fort Belknap Indian Reservation to fight the use of methamphetamine.

In his email, Windy Boy wrote that the the state could work with that “or other creative, outside-the-box types of programs to curb suicide, suicidal tendencies.”