Story from Las Vegas City Life - A weekly publication distributed throughout Las Vegas, Nevada.  May 8th edition, 2008.

Dying for attention

One man's campaign of raising suicide awareness has state officials raising eyebrows

by ANDREW KIRALY

PHOTO BY BILL HUGHES
Matthew Dovel, president of International Suicide Prevention

WHAT QUALIFIES former cokehead, alcoholic and drug courier Matthew Dovel as a suicide prevention expert? Not a counseling degree. Not a psychiatry background. Not a marriage and family therapy license. Nothing like that.

His credentials: Dovel tried to kill himself in 1987 with three bottles of sleeping pills and a fifth of Beefeater gin. He's spent his life since then talking to people about the warning signs of suicide, counseling relatives of victims and connecting devastated families with resources.

"I work on an experiential level," says Dovel, president of Las Vegas-based International Suicide Prevention and author of My Last Breath. "I didn't come from UNLV over here, saying, 'It says here you're hiccupping so you must be suicidal.' You know what? I come from the heart when I talk to people and they know that. They learn more from my classes I teach, knowing I'm not there to get a paycheck, but to help them learn to detect the warning signs better. It's not a clinical class." Clinical or not, Nevada can use all the help it can get. According to the latest statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nevada has the nation's second-highest annual suicide rate at about 20 per 100,000 people, second only to Montana. The state's suicide-prevention office only formed in 2003 and wasn't funded until 2005.

At a recent interview about his suicide prevention campaign, Dovel is wearing a pressed white shirt and slacks, but there's little that's fastidious about his straight-talk approach to suicide. At a Dovel presentation -- he says he's presented to everyone from soldiers to students -- he talks about his hard-partying days in Anchorage, Alaska, where in the '80s he developed a $1,000-a-week cocaine habit. He talks about how a side gig running drugs for a bike gang led to a plunge into addiction, despair and his suicide attempt. He talks about how his near-death experience took him to hell -- complete with demons, lightning and thunder.

He puts his hands to his chest. "I forgot to wear my pin."

Oh, the pin. The logo pin. International Suicide Prevention's logo is a noose with a slash through it. It's provocative and eye-catching -- and it's certainly caught the eye of state suicide-prevention officials. To them, it's not just insensitive. They say the logo, just one part of Dovel's blunt style, threatens to backfire and perhaps send someone contemplating suicide over the edge.

"We have no problem with Mr. Dovel's efforts and his concern for preventing suicide," says Misty Allen, suicide prevention coordinator with the Nevada Office of Suicide Prevention. "But there are evidence-based protocols for doing this safely. People who are suicidal are vulnerable, and we want to protect them from images or media stories that might increase the risk of following through. When you see a pin with a noose, that puts not only people who are suicidal at risk, but people who have experienced the suicide of a loved one -- it sends them reeling. Not to mention the racial implications. The noose just went too many places for me." Indeed, many suicide-prevention organizations, such as the Massachusetts-based Suicide Prevention Resource Center, warn against depicting methods of suicide in campaigns. They say research shows it can spur on a suicidal person to do the deed.

In a March 2007 letter, Linda Flatt of the Office of Suicide Prevention even urged Dovel to abandon his noose image. "The image of the noose is very insensitive to survivors of suicide loss -- especially those who have lost a loved one by hanging," she wrote. "This seems to violate your mission to provide family support to those who have lost a loved on by suicide. In addition, I strongly sense that the pin would be considered a form of suicide contagion." Flatt is on vacation and was not available for comment.

Months later, Dovel fired back a letter -- copying the mayor, the attorney general and the governor -- alleging the state office had "embarked on a malicious slander campaign" against him. Dovel and state officials have since been politely ignoring each other, not making referrals and not attending each others' events.

Dovel stands by the noose. "They claim the nooses we have are propagating suicides," he says. "My take on it was, 'Hey, I wear this pin as a way to initiate a conversation about something no one wants to talk about.' People say, 'What the hell are you wearing a noose for?' It has a slash through it and it says 'Stop suicide,' so it's not like I'm wearing a noose."

The skirmish between Dovel and state officials is brewing over more than just his controversial logo. His other methods might be considered unorthodox as well. His "Happiness is a choice" workshop, which covers alcohol abuse, drug addiction and suicide, draws heavily on concepts such as neurolinguistic programming, a style of mental pep-talking that's big with personal-power gurus (think Anthony Robbins).

"When people see things in a certain light, we use words to have them to start to see things in a different light," explains Stephen Jenkins, a "subconscious retrainer" who advises Dovel. "Then you see that a-ha moment in their head, that there's another way out of this than suicide."

Former clients -- some of them now volunteers for International Suicide Prevention -- have nothing but rave reviews of Dovel's methods.

"He doesn't sugarcoat anything [in his presentations]. He's very explicit and blunt, and you have to be when it comes to suicide," says Lena Ocasio, a mortgage broker whose fiance killed himself in August. Ocasio says the police referred her to Dovel for counseling after the death of fiance. "He was amazing. He's a great listener, and he's very compassionate. You can feel it in the tone of his voice." Ocasio has since volunteered at events as a supporter of the group.

She also supports Dovel's recently launched campaign to start up a charity fund for suicide scene cleanup, as Dovel contends that families are stuck with the trauma -- and the bill -- of cleaning up the scene after a family member commits suicide. Ocasio says she herself had to pay. "After the police left, I was by myself. They gave me a list of biohazard cleanup crews, and it cost me $1,700 just two have two guys in white suits dispose of all the blood. Nobody offered to help pay. Then I had to pay for the side of the house [to be repaired]. It was almost $3,000 in damages." (A Metro police spokesperson insists that in Clark County, suicide scene cleanup is covered in the budget of the responding officer's department; family members don't pay a dime.) In other cases, International Suicide Prevention volunteers themselves have taken up mop and bucket in the wake of a suicide. Volunteer Geoff Gallo says he's helped Dovel clean up two different suicide scenes in the past three years.

"I think his cause is very noble," says Gallo. "I've seen him on the phone for hours when we're out having a cup of coffee, and he's on the phone the whole time. He's talking someone out of killing himself."

Like Dovel, Gallo dismisses state anti-suicide efforts. "They're pretty useless. I've watched them for years, and they don't do anything as far as I'm concerned. They have issues with him because he tells it like it is. He speaks his mind."

That may be changing. Last year, the state launched a six-year suicide prevention plan that hopes to lower our state's rank with an aggressive awareness and training campaign. Allen suggests our high suicide rate might have less to do with gambling and free-flowing alcohol than with Nevada's legacy of rugged individualism. "Nevada is a very independent, tough state," she says. "But I think that prevents people from reaching out for help and also giving help."

As for the independent-minded Dovel, he's appreciative but skeptical of the state's plan. "I teach from a practical perspective," he says. "They teach from a book perspective."