Milton webinar spotlights trauma, grief and local suicide-prevention efforts

City of Milton hosted its seventh annual Milton Mental Wellness webinar featuring mental-health professionals, community leaders and two sisters who lost their father to suicide. Presenters described how trauma and grief affect the body and brain, outlined coping skills and therapies, and highlighted community resources and a local survivor-organized fundraiser that raised more than $7,000.

The program, opened by Mayor Payton Jamieson, brought together the LRJ Foundation and counselors from Johns Creek Alpharetta Counseling (JCAC) to “raise awareness, share resources, offer support, and do what we can to reduce the stigma around discussing one's mental health struggles,” Jamieson said. JCAC clinicians described practical first-line strategies people can use when triggered and when to seek a trauma specialist.

"A definition, a really great definition, is that it's a severe emotional response to a stressful event that overwhelms a person's ability to process the whole trauma emotionally," said Jenny Vose, a licensed professional counselor and certified traumatologist with JCAC. Vose explained that trauma becomes stored in the…