Mental health lecture series focuses on suicide

4/24/2006

BOWLING GREEN Since restoring the old Lunatic House, a building that once housed the county s mentally ill, the Wood County Historical Center has been holding a spring mental-health lecture series to help people understand the history of mental health services.

The series will focus on suicide, a topic made timely by the death this year of a local high school student, said Christie Raber, director of the center. We re using the Lunatic Asylum as a platform for the discussion of the history of mental health care and treatment, she said.

The series begins April 28 with a 3 p.m. panel discussion entitled Let s Talk Honestly About Suicide at the theater inside the Bowen Thompson Student Union at Bowling Green State University. On April 29, Ellen Anderson, a professional clinical counselor, will speak at 2 p.m. at the historical center on County Home Road about how and why suicide is viewed as a social taboo and what is being done to change that.

The Lunatic House and mental health exhibit at the historical museum will be open for tours afterward. Both lectures are free and open to the public.