There will be a Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser held on Thursday, May 20 at 6:30 pm at the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center on the USU Eastern Campus. The evening’s dinner is being sponsored by HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties, Gagon Family Medicine, Southeast Utah Health Department, and Utah State University. Everyone is welcomed to attend this event that will focus on Suicide Prevention: How to talk to our youth about mental health.
“It’s a Spaghetti Dinner, it is a fundraiser, but a very low-cost fundraiser, the tickets are only $7.50 a person, with the proceeds going to benefit the USU Eastern Counseling and Wellness Center. Hopefully, it will help them with some outreach efforts and so forth for students there on the campus. But it’s a Spaghetti Dinner and then we’re going to have a couple of speakers come in and talk about Suicide Prevention and talking to our youth about mental health,” said Director of Gagon Family Medicine, Gina Gagon. Parents are urged to attend this event so that they are able open the lines of communication when it comes to mental health with their youth.
There are two speakers scheduled to speak at the event, Mary Schulz and W. Brandon Callor CPM. “Mary Schulz is an amazing, amazing woman in this community. She has some children that struggle with mental health and with suicidal thoughts and suicide ideation and so she has created this community and she calls them her tribe. It’s everyone from people at the school, her family, her church family, they all come together and have their arms wrapped around this family in a system of support,” said Suicide Prevention Specialist, Amanda McIntosh. The story you will hear from Mary will show that she is optimistic and hopeful when it comes to her family’s wellbeing.
“Then we’re going to have Brandon Callor he’s a native of Helper, Utah, so he’s coming back. He works at the State Medical Examiner’s Office and is on Dr. Stalley’s Post Mortem Suicide Research Team and so he’s got a lot of lived experience, first of all, but also the medical professional side of suicide and what he’s seeing trending in our youth suicide and whatnot,” said McIntosh. Tickets for the event can be found on Eventbrite.com or you can call the Southeast Utah Health Department at
(435) 637-3671 for more information.