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"Never the Same" is an interview-based podcast exploring how different work streams intersect with suicide prevention, career development, and life lessons. The title draws inspiration from Heraclitus' quote, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man," reflecting the ever-changing nature of life and personal growth. Each episode features conversations with guests from various fields, highlighting defining moments and shifts in thinking. The podcast aims to uncover new insights for suicide prevention while offering broader perspectives on personal and professional growth.
Tony: [00:00:00] Today I am very happy to welcome Jonathan Singer to the Never the Same podcast. And Jonathan is no stranger to podcasting. He is the OG of podcasting. He's actually been doing that since 2007 and the term podcasting only goes back to 2004 and almost nobody knew what a podcast was at that time. But that's not his primary profession.
He is a social work professor at, Loyola University and the co-author of Suicide in Schools, a topic that's really important, can be pretty painful to talk about, but I'm really eager to learn from you about that. He's past president of the American Association for Suicidology and the first social worker to interview chatGpT.
So we'll get into, a, a, a lot of that, but, I'm really happy to have you here and have a [00:01:00] chance to kind of in a unhurried way, learn about your work and your thinking.
Jonathan: Thanks, Tony. It's a honor and a pleasure to be here and to be able to dive into some of this stuff one-on-one, which we really haven't been able to do.
We just mostly see each other at advisory board meetings, so this is great.
Tony: Yeah. So I wanna start, maybe, you know, somewhat unusual in that I, in researching about your experiences, I learned that you're a jazz musician and that you studied in Leon, France
Jonathan: That's right.
Tony: In, in, in the conservatory there.
I'm interested to hear about that and maybe how has jazz shaped you as a person and as a professional?
Jonathan: Yeah, studying at the Conservatoire Régional de Lyon.
Tony: So nice.
Jonathan: It's so nice. It was
an amazing experience. [00:02:00] I was there for a year and it's, it's where my, my, my jazz chops, I'm a drummer, went from being somebody who listened to jazz, who liked to play jazz to, I dove in, I like, got inside jazz and I really felt like I was able to express myself, musically
in a combo situation. Like I understood enough about the, the language of jazz to be able to communicate with, with my other, my fellow musicians.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: When we were, when we were in the improv section of a jazz tune, right? So jazz tunes, you've got the head, then you improvise, and then you play the head again.
It's very simple, but there's so much of it is about sort of getting into that flow state. And, couple years later when I decided to, go get my MSW and
Tony: Which is a master's in social work.
Jonathan: The master's in [00:03:00] social work at UT Austin, and I learned how to do therapy or started to learn how to do therapy, what I realized was that
those same skills of tuning into what is the theme and then how can I acknowledge the theme, do my own thing to support whoever was sort of taking lead at that moment without, kind of, abdicating my role as being a part of the group, was exactly what therapy, particularly family therapy, was all about.
And so all of the, the things that I learned as a jazz musician came into play with my work as particularly a family therapist. And, and I actually made the very intentional choice not to, integrate my music with my therapy. Like, [00:04:00] and I very intentionally decided not to, provide therapy to musicians because I wanted to keep those two areas of my life separate.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
What, what you just said, really stimulated a few different ideas for me, and I get curious about, this idea that, that you're, you're building off of what somebody else is, in this, playing or saying, and then bringing your own piece to it, but while, but, but not going off in your own direction, staying part of the group, but bring, but bringing something new to it.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: That seems like it's bigger than therapy too. Like that seems like that's collaboration.
Jonathan: Yeah. It, it absolutely is. Well, and, and what's, it's really tricky when you haven't yet developed the skills to do it. And then once you have, it's really tricky not to, right? So, it requires. Being able to [00:05:00] hold what's the thread and then what else could happen at the same time.
And weaving those two things together is, it's collaboration, right? It is, it is exactly what makes successful teams successful.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Because people are bringing to the table the, the thing that makes their perspective unique without taking over, without being like, you gotta do it my way. Right?
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: So yeah.
Tony: This, this might be just because it's something that's on my mind a lot. but what you just described is what I really see as being the fundamental skill for the next 10 years actually.
Jonathan: Hmm.
Tony: Because that's exactly what we need to be able to do with AI.
Jonathan: Hmm.
Tony: So for those who haven't interacted with AI, there is, right now one of the ways you can interact with, an, an AI is through a a chat interface.
And for those of us who do that a lot, there is an improvisation to [00:06:00] it. In fact, people who, who computer code with artificial intelligence call it vibe coding because you're sort of getting a vibe from it, you're giving back, you're adding to, and being able to understand the thread. And so, you know, I I, I feel like that, you know, we, we do have for a number of people who are sort of early in their career who listen to this podcast, and many of them are wondering, like, what is going to, which direction is the world going and what will, you know, whether it's social work or they're in business.
And to me it is this, see the thread, be able to take what you're seeing, but also bring yourself to it, you know. That's the people who are gonna be able to really contribute going
forward, are the people who can take what, what, you know, maybe a, a, a robot is giving you and then go, go with it, but also take it in another direction [00:07:00] and add to it.
So I don't know if, if that resonates at all for you.
Jonathan: Yeah. Well, I think the interesting thing about, you know, generative AI, conversational AIs, is that they're, you know, they're, they're trained on all the internet data that they were able to scrape from. So you
Tony: Human writing basically.
Jonathan: Yeah.
You get like Reddit and you then you got like, you know, public domain books or not public domain books. You get all this content. And so, I think one of the exciting things is when you're in a conversation with, conversational AI and, and it makes a connection that you haven't thought of and then you use what you know to say, well, does that actually make sense?
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: Right? So you, you, you never offload your critical thinking, but you're like, oh, interesting. You have an entire
Tony: Corpus of humanity.
Jonathan: Exactly. At your fingertips.
Tony: This is what you're thinking.
Jonathan: Yeah. You're making this connection
Tony: And what can I do with it?
You know, how do you, how do I [00:08:00] now improvise from there?
Jonathan: How, how can I improvise from there? What questions? And, and I think,
Tony: Or maybe you don't go in that direction.
Jonathan: Yeah. And I think being able to say like, oh, interesting. You made this connection. And then having, having the skill to, or the interest that, the curiosity to follow through with that.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Very much like jazz, very much like therapy.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Because you actually don't know.
Tony: Yeah. And it takes taste and judgment.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: Which I think are the, that those are sort of the, the, the, the jewel, the crown jewels or whatever of our next decade is having taste and judgment.
Jonathan: Hmm.
Tony: And it sounds like, you know, so all these things are sort of firing on my mind as you were talking about that with, with respect to jazz.
There, there was something else I, I saw in your background. You mentioned the University of Texas at Austin, and I know you had a mentor there, named Max.
Jonathan: Guy Maddox.
Tony: [00:09:00] Guy Max.
Jonathan: Guy Maddox.
Tony: Guy Maddox. Oh, what a great name.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: So tell me about Guy, what you learned from him.
Jonathan: Guy was great. He, he was my first clinical supervisor.
You know, I was, I was living in Austin, Texas. He was from Texas. He had a very, grounded way of understanding, human, the human experience. And, you know, one of the things that he said to me early on, I was staffing cases and I was, I was just
Tony: So like talking about the people you'd worked with?
Jonathan: Yeah.
Just a separate through context through. So I was working community mental health at the child, adolescent, psychiatric emergency team. It was outpatient. We would, we worked with, suicidal, homicidal, and actively psychotic kids. Any kid that did not have private insurance in Travis County, was eligible to get services.
So we interacted a lot [00:10:00] with schools, emergency shelters, went to hospitals, out to people's homes, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, I'd be staffing cases and I would say things like, you know, so, you know, "mom brought in this kid and he did this, and then blah, blah, blah. I was talking with mom and then grandma was there and blah, blah, blah."
And Guy asked me this question, he said, "where's the dad?" And the first time he asked me, I was like, "well, there is no dad." And he was like, "there's a dad somewhere." Right? And, and so one piece of it was, where's the actual dad? Like what, what's that story? Mm-hmm. Has the dad never been in this kid's life? Did the dad leave recently?
Is the dad a long haul trucker, and so gone for three months at a time? Like,
Tony: What's the story?
Jonathan: What's the story, right? This is basic family therapy, genogram stuff. But the other piece was [00:11:00] where is the important thing? What is the important thing that is not present that you are not thinking to ask about?
Right? Ask about the thing that is
not there.
Tony: What's not there?
Jonathan: And that was such a, a revelation. And it was, it was a hugely important piece. And so it, it got to the point where he would say, "well, where's the dad?" But he wasn't actually talking about the dad.
Tony: It wasn't just about that.
Jonathan: Yeah. He was, he was asking about where, where are the, what is the thing that you are not seeing?
Tony: Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan: Think, think about that.
Tony: There's actually, I think, now somebody can fact check me on this, but I think it, it was, there's a psychologist named Gary Klein, is it who, who, who, identified this bias of, that we have, which is "what you see is all there is bias," that, that we have as fundamental human to sort of only take in what we see and not what isn't there.
And we, in, in our, [00:12:00] some of our frameworks for, understanding suicide concerns, one of the things that we try to do is help people look for what's not there to help kind of be better, be able to anticipate how to support people. But, but that, that seems pretty, pretty important and it might be one of those sort of threads, that so to, to look for what isn't in a situation.
And maybe that's a place we can also ask questions when we're with a team or in a therapy situation, what's not there. How has that idea of, of looking for what's not there kind of influenced you over, over time?
Jonathan: You know, I mean, it's, it, it is part of the, the systems thinking that has informed everything that I've done.
Tony: Can you explain for people who might not know what that is, what is systems thinking?
Jonathan: So, systems thinking, you can think of systems as a family system. You can [00:13:00] think of it as an organizational system. It's this idea that, the way that people act at an individual level is only partially based on sort of their personality or their values or attitudes,
and a lot of it's based on the, the structures, the, the, the myths, the rules. Lots of these things are, are invisible and hidden. So, you know, in a family, you know, any, anybody that's listening that has had a, had a, had a long-term partner, that first time you met with their family and you're like, oh, that's weird.
Why do they do that? And nobody's thinking that it's weird. Or like, my family would never do that. Sometimes that's the first time that you are confronted with the fact that there are these hidden rules that govern people's behaviors.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: Right? That, that, and, and so, so part of it is understanding that piece of the system.
The other part is understanding that change in one part of the system changes another part of the system, right? I mean, this is just sort of [00:14:00] classic,
Tony: Feedback loops within systems.
Jonathan: Exactly. Exactly. You know, when we wrote the book Suicide in Schools, we called it, a Practitioner's Guide to Multi-Level,
right? And that, that idea was that it was multi-level. It was you, you couldn't just talk about, well, how do you have a conversation with a kid? It was, so you're having a conversation with a kid, but why are you asking that? Because what does that then mean for the next steps? And how's that influenced by what's available in terms of resources out in the community?
And then how are those resources out in the community influenced by what the values were, right? And then what the, what the federal, funding was for services. And like all of that is,
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Is a piece of it now in the moment. If you're working with a suicidal kid, I hope that you're not wondering about Medicaid policy, right?
You need to be focused on what's going on, but you, you also, as a professional, need to recognize that, you know, what affects the pond affects the fish. [00:15:00] And, and so if you're not, then you're missing out on that multi-level systemic way of thinking. And so the absence of things or the things that are not seen, that's a lot of what systems are.
Tony: Hmm. Yeah. So when, when, when we see any person's behavior, we tend to think it's about their personality or something. But we can ask, well, what, what's not there? And often that is a, you know, a structure of relationships and values and these things that are a little harder to see. I, I, I know that some of your, recent work with, an another collaborator, sociologist, has also been looking at these kind of unseen things in schools to try to understand why there is more suicide in some schools than others.
I think that's a question that a lot of people have when you see certain district or a certain school and they've had a number of suicides. All the people there seem to be very caring, [00:16:00] doing some of the similar things. You know, we can't know for sure because we can't, it's very hard to like randomize everything.
But, what have you been learning, you and your colleagues, about some of the hidden things in schools that explain that difference?
Jonathan: Yeah, so I've been working with Anna Muller, and her colleagues. She's at IU Bloomington. she's a sociologist.
Tony: That's the university.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm. That's right. And, you know, we've been doing this study and one of the, one of the most interesting findings from this study, and this is based on the data that we've collected, is that in schools, where there seem to be few, where there are fewer suicides, the, the schools have paid attention to what people might think of as little small things that we call [00:17:00] weak signals.
Tony: Weak signals.
Jonathan: Right. And this comes from the sociology of organizations literature.
Tony: Hmm.
Jonathan: And, and, and the idea is that there is a structure and and a process in place to say, okay, you, somebody saw a kid not doing well for a couple weeks in class and another person, you know, a coach was like, oh, they're not doing so great in, in, in their practice.
They're not, they're not performing as well on the field as they have been. And then, you know, the hall monitor hears somebody, a couple of kids talking about, "oh, did you see what they wrote on their social media?" And individually, these are, these don't mean anything but taken together, that's right,
there is some suggestion, well, maybe we should bring this kid in. Maybe we should talk to this. Let's find out what's going on. So in suicide prevention, we, for a long time we've talked about upstream prevention, right? And so, you know, one of the ways to, to bridge the [00:18:00] gap between this concept of upstream prevention, meaning like, like if, if you have a kid that died by suicide, right,
and you, and you rewind the tape, how far upstream do you have to go so that you could have changed that trajectory? It's not invisible in the sense that there's no information, it's invisible if the only thing you're looking for is a strong signal.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: It's invisible. If the only thing you're looking for is a statement about I want to kill myself.
Tony: And the policies in these school, those policies about dealing, you know, helping students in crisis,
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: those things though, they were the same?
Jonathan: Yeah. Similar, similar policies, you know, statewide recommendations, requirements, things like that.
Tony: Are all met. But in some of these schools, there was just this, this expectation
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: of, of noticing.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: What's almost not there, that's these kind of weak, weak signals. [00:19:00] Let's talk about your podcast a little bit.
Jonathan: Okay.
Tony: So, as I said, you're the, the, the, the OG of podcasting here. And so it's been, so 2007 to now.
Jonathan: A lot of years.
Tony: Yeah. 19 years. What have you learned from, doing the Social Work podcast for that amount of time?
Jonathan: I have learned so many things. I have not only learned the content that my guests have shared, because as you know, when you edit a podcast, you have to listen to the content over and over again to figure out where you're gonna edit, where you're gonna cut, where you're gonna, you know, all those sorts of things.
So, listening through repetition or learning through, through repetition.
But I've also learned that as a podcaster, my clinical skills did not translate perfectly to being a good podcaster.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: So one of the things that I heard in my [00:20:00] early episodes is I did a lot of verbal following. Right?
That's what we call it. It's, it's one of the counseling skills. It's, it's when somebody says something, you're like, hmm mm-hmm, oh.
Tony: Oh yeah, I think I do that all the time.
Jonathan: Yeah, I do that all the time. And what I noticed is that when I do verbal following, it interrupts the listeners experience. Because you and I are sitting here having a conversation, but the person who's listening to it is actually having me in their ear.
And so I'm looking at you, Tony, but I'm actually talking to the person who's listening to the podcast. And what I found was that when I interrupted, for, for good reasons, right, because I was trying to encourage my guest and, you know, let them know that I was vibing with what they were saying.
Tony: I'm trying not to do it right now.
Jonathan: Is that it, every time I did that, it reminded the [00:21:00] listener that they were listening in on somebody else's conversation.
Tony: Hmm.
Jonathan: And what I wanted
Tony: Did it again.
Jonathan: And what I wanted was for them as much as possible to have an experience of my guest talking to them.
Tony: Hmm. That's really, that's really powerful. Why did you start it all the way back then?
Jonathan: Back in the day.
So I was, I was a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh and I was teaching a practice theories course and my students, they were master's students in the school of social work. Some of them were traveling a long ways to get to class. And, I recognized that it was not fair that some of them were driving like two and a half hours to get to class and, you know, they would listen the radio or whatever.
And, again, this was in 2006 when I was thinking about this and I realized they did not understand how valuable [00:22:00] some of the content was that they were learning because they were not yet practicing. And so I wanted to give them something they could take away that would be useful in the future when they were actually practicing, when it would actually make a difference for their clients.
And so my first thought was to record summaries of my lectures and burn 'em onto CD and then hand them out at the end of class and be like, here you go. And
Tony: That's what we're gonna do with this.
Jonathan: Yeah. It's, it's all gonna be CDs. We're gonna mail 'em out to people in red envelopes. And, so at the end- that was at Netflix joke,
for those of you who, who don't know- I was sitting at my desk one evening, it was like November, December of, 2006, and I was listening to a podcast while I was doing work. And again, podcasts were relatively new.
Tony: There was a handful.
Jonathan: Yeah. So you, you know, and the way that you listened to them, you [00:23:00] would, you would download 'em on iTunes and then you would plug in your iPod and you'd put 'em on your iPod and you'd plug in your earphones.
You would listen to them. And so I decided, well, I'm gonna do a podcast. And really the idea was, how do I get this information to my students. I figured 25 people would listen to it. And at the end of the semester, I was looking at the stats and there had been over 3000 downloads.
Tony: Hmm.
Jonathan: And I thought, well, I only have 25 students, what is happening?
And so it was clear to me that there was an audience that was interested in content related to social work and so I just decided to continue.
Tony: It's really interesting, especially 'cause, I mean, this was a class and it just shows how, how many different kinds of interests there are among, among people.
Let's, let's dig into suicide in schools a bit. And I want to talk, kind of in, in, in the middle of our time here [00:24:00] about a topic that's just so sad. Sometimes people save this topic for the end of a conversation, but I kinda wanna put it in the middle so that we, not the last thing that we leave with, but that is when a student dies in a school.
There's a term in suicide prevention called postvention, which is what you do after. I don't know what the nature, where that term came from, but that's what people talk about is postvention. Could you talk about, you know, what happens in a school when someone dies? What are the challenges that the schools face?
What can schools do? And, you know, from perspective of people who might be, listening to us, what can those of us in a community or parents do when there's been a suicide?
Jonathan: So postvention is a term that was coined by, Ed Schneiderman, who founder of the [00:25:00] field of Suicidology, and it is the, the, the act of addressing grief and loss after a suicide death and working to prevent future suicides that might in some way be related to that suicide death. And particularly for, for kids and particularly teenagers, there's this idea of suicide contagion, which is if you have a 15-year-old die by suicide, there is a very real effect that other 15 year olds who are already suicidal, are at increased risk now for dying by suicide.
This is not actually true in other age groups. So I'm 55. statistically it's much more likely that, a colleague of mine will die by suicide, a 55-year-old white man, than a 15-year-old. But it is very [00:26:00] unlikely that other 55 year olds that knew that person will then try to end their lives. So contagion is something that happens, is very much a youth phenomena.
And so part of postvention in schools is thinking about that and addressing suicide risk with kids to avoid contagion. When you're in a school, identifying the kids who were previously or, or a known risk is part of that and which is why universal screening is really important. Having eyes on your kids in a, in a school and understanding which kids are struggling, right, at any given time, but particularly having that information after a suicide death is really important in that. Also knowing the social circles, who is it that was most close to the kid that died is really important because they need something different than those that were acquaintances. And then what families [00:27:00] and community members can do, after a student suicide death is, well, first of all, let me just say that when a kid dies by suicide, obviously it affects the school community, where the kid went to school, but, but it's actually a, a family member who dies, right?
And so the ripple effects, can be felt most intensely out in the community with the family. And so the school addressing the grief and loss needs of the kids in that school and also maintaining communication with the family of the kid that died, ends up supporting the community so that they know that there are resources, that there are things that are happening.
'Cause otherwise it's, it's all on the community. And sometimes families have a place to go and sometimes they don't.
Tony: Yeah. And so as a, as a parent, what, what would a [00:28:00] parent say to their own child? Maybe they knew 'em well, maybe they didn't know the person very well, who died. What, what are some more thoughts that you have about that?
Jonathan: So, so the, the scenario is that, a kid has died by suicide and then a parent of another kid in the school
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Is wondering, well, what do I say to my,
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: my kid? I mean, I think the, you know, the, the, the most basic thing that any parent can do is, is a acknowledge that this death occurred, that people have different reactions to death.
You know, as adults, I think most adults have lost, have have known somebody who's died. And some adults have lost people that have been very close to them. And, and every time there is, another death, it's easier to open that door to grief. [00:29:00] If this is the first time somebody's died in your life, you might not be feeling anything other than like, wow, this is weird.
Like, they're not here anymore. Huh? Like, you might forget. And they're like, oh yeah, they're not here. Right. And so, presuming that kids should feel sad or they should be crying, or they should be feeling the way adults feel is problematic. And so parents can acknowledge this person's gone, you might have some questions, and there's lots of different ways that people can respond to this.
Tony: Yeah, yeah. I sometimes think about it as, we, we often wanna know what to say, but many times what we need to do is ask, and and and find out what, what the person, what your child is thinking or feeling, what they've seen, what they've heard.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: I, I've found that, that, [00:30:00] many times, both in my own family but also in the young people that I've worked with over the years, they're sometimes more able to talk about what other people are going through, or what they've seen, or what they've heard, rather than necessarily what they feel. They might just say, "I'm fine", or something like that. But like, oh, well, you know. What about, you know, "your friend Jessica, what have you heard her saying? What have, what have you, you know, what, what have you seen posted about it?"
These are a little bit more concrete than like, "how are you doing?" It's fine to ask "how are you doing?" But, my, in my experience, that's yields less than questions.
Jonathan: I love what you said because, you know, teenagers are way more peer-oriented than adults. And so by asking questions about, "hey, how are your friends dealing with [00:31:00] this?
How are they doing?" Inevitably, you'll get some insight into how your own kid is doing. But you're asking about the thing that is perhaps most important to them. And so it's, it's, it's, it's a great way of, of doing that. Likewise, parents, I think particularly around suicide, they should be thinking about parenting, as community parenting. Right?
Tony: What do you mean by that?
Jonathan: So what I mean by that is that you have, your kid and then their friends and their friends have parents, and the question is, how well do you know your kids' friends' parents, and what are they telling their kids? How are they monitoring their kids' responses? And how does that then inform the interaction between your kid and their friends?
In an ideal situation, you are friends [00:32:00] with your kids' friends' parents.
Tony: Or at least know them enough.
Jonathan: You know them enough so that if there is something that they see that your kid is doing, they can share that with you. Something concerning.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Right?
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: And so with community parenting, it can include things like, okay, so our kids are 10 and 11, let's talk about suicide.
We know that at some point somebody's gonna, somebody in our community is gonna be having thoughts of suicide. Somebody somewhere is gonna, attempt suicide. Somebody somewhere will see somebody who's died by suicide. How do we as a community of parents understand this? What are our values? What are our beliefs?
How are we gonna respond to our kids about this?
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I wonder, actually, I, I don't think I've heard this before, but I wonder if it should be a, a, almost a, a almost like a recommendation [00:33:00] or a guideline that, if there's a suicide in the school where your, where your child attends, it's recommended that you call the parents of your child's friends.
You know? "Did you hear about that?" And, you know, and in, in a sense, you're, you're strengthening the network over the network. I don't know that that's, I've heard that specific recommendation before, but maybe that's a, maybe that's one just to, to say when people say, well, what, you know, what do I, not just so much, what do you tell, but what do you ask?
And number two is, one thing you can do is forge, an alliance with that. Now, hopefully you don't, don't have to wait until something like that happens to, to know your child's friend's parents. But even if you don't, it is a time you could call and say, "Hey, we heard about that. You know, did you hear about it?"
You know, some, some something, something like that.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
And in fact, it's, it's, you know, there's that saying that's, you know, when [00:34:00] the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is right now.
Tony: Hmm.
Jonathan: Right?
And so, like, if you haven't made those connections with parents before, definitely do it right after the, the suicide.
We know that crises are this window of opportunity, so it could be that people are more open to talking. It could also be that people are not. Right? But I know that, in Evanston we had, a high school student die by suicide. And because I knew parents of kids at the high school and I knew something about their kids.
I knew that those kids probably knew this kid not from the high school, but because they were likely in a residential treatment facility with this kid, and this kid was not currently in school. I reached out to the parents to say, "Hey, I don't know if you've heard." And they were like, "no, I haven't." And one parent did.
Right? And so I was like, "hey, has your kid been [00:35:00] in touch with this kid?" "Oh, I don't know." Okay. So like, we had a whole conversation, series of conversations about this. How do we support our kids around this? And, and what are the, what might happen? How might our kids respond when and if the school sends out a message?
Now, in this particular case, the, the school did not send out a notice in part because that kid was not currently a student at the school. Right? Which at the time I was like, well, I don't know about that. But in retrospect, it was the, it was, it was a great thing for the school to do, but we talk about that if we want, but yeah.
Yeah.
Tony: Go ahead.
Jonathan: Well, no, I mean, I,
Tony: You peaked my interest.
Jonathan: No, well, I think that, you know, again, this is where these recommendations about what the school should do and what it shouldn't do. Right? I think there's, because for so long there's been this sense that schools have felt like, oh, if we acknowledge suicide, it will increase the risk that kids will die by suicide.
And so there's been this silence about it.
Tony: And they're also, and so [00:36:00] they're often concerned about privacy of the family
Jonathan: A hundred percent.
Tony: And those things too, right? So they're kind of in a, at a bit of a bind.
Jonathan: Totally a bind. And so I think the, you know, the, the suicidology community has pushed, I've been one of those folks that have really pushed schools to, think about why wouldn't you send a notice out?
Why wouldn't you publicly acknowledge this? You would publicly acknowledge if a kid was in a car accident, died by cancer, or died from cancer. Right? You know, some sort of accidental something, right, they're, like they wouldn't hesitate to send out a notice, "we're so, you know, sad to say that so and so died this weekend."
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: So why wouldn't you do that with a suicide? And so there's been this push and then I was in a situation where the kid was not currently enrolled and, and actually did [00:37:00] not interact with very many kids in this very large high school. And, and so for me it was a great reminder that, yeah, there was very little upside to making a, a, a school-wide announcement to go out to 4,000 kids about somebody that like 3,900 people didn't know.
Tony: Mm-hmm. And wasn't a student then.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: Yeah. So is that something, is that something that you've kind of changed your mind on?
Jonathan: It's just, it's just expanded how I think about talking to schools.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: I still lead with a question, like, or the, the, the statement like, you should always ask yourself why wouldn't we?
Tony: Mm-hmm. But maybe there's an answer of, of reason,
Jonathan: but maybe this is one of the reasons. Yeah.
Tony: Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You, you mentioned, you know, sort of that the field of, of Suicidology and you were the, the President
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: Of the American Association of [00:38:00] Suicidology. I wonder if you could talk about what that's like. Maybe you know it, it's, it's not like it's a discipline, right? It's not like you're a, a pediatrician, a psychologist, a suicidologist. Right? And so I'm curious about, like, when you say that you are what people outside the field think, when you say "suicidology." And what you learned from being at the head of an organization focused on suicide.
Jonathan: I mean, you, you, you might have had the same experience. I, I say "suicidology" and people are like, wait, "what is that? Is that a thing?" I'm like, you know, "it's the science of suicide. It's studying suicide. It's like anthropology or sociology rights, theology. It's the science of it." And they're like, "there's a science behind that?
Like is it, is it like how to do it better?" Like, what are you talking about? Right. and, and so, so, you know, I, I respond to that and I, I let them know. And, [00:39:00] now in terms of the, the, the question about what it was like to be the president of the American Association of Suicidology, it was, it was, an incredible training ground for what it means to be in leadership of, you know, a national, internationally recognized organization. Some of the plus sides were that, because I was comfortable speaking to journalists, I got a lot of airtime when I was president, so things would happen, journalists would reach out to the organization and Chris Maxwell, the communications guy, would just funnel it to me.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: So I ended up being in the paper a lot, which was cool. Right?
Tony: And did it give you a chance to say things that you feel like needed to be said?
Jonathan: Absolutely. I mean, you know, I, I learned about the, I, I got my own sort of in vivo [00:40:00] media training. Right? So, I learned how to respond to journalists when they would ask questions, and they always started out que with the, the question, why are the suicide rates going up?
First question. And, and we know that we don't actually know. We don't know why they go up. We don't know why they go down. That's just true. Now, for any one individual, we might be able to say this, this likely to–
Tony: Seems like this is what happened.
Jonathan: Exactly. Or blah, blah, blah. But like, I, I think everybody was surprised.
For example, youth suicide rates have dropped. Right? Even while the penetration and saturation of social media and smartphones has increased. Even while there has been, increased, political tensions while there have been like all these sorts of things, right? So like, wait, what's happening?
So being able to know how [00:41:00] to kind of direct the conversation was really important. Also, recognizing that, being interviewed by CNN or the New York Times or whatever and, and, and, and saying things like, what we need is more real time data on suicide, right? We need this. That was a way of getting it out there so that when legislators or, or more likely their aides were reading the newspaper, when they're seeing things, they're like, oh, this is really something.
Okay. So when, when folks come to us and they're like, "why are we not having more realtime data? Why can't we do more, you know, sort of up to speed, you know, policy prevention?"
Tony: Just explain what, what real time data means.
Jonathan: Yeah. So, so right now if we look at, provisional suicide rates, right, we're looking at 2024.
We're here in the beginning of 2026. We don't have 2025. Right? And so if, if you asked me, "hey, [00:42:00] Jonathan. What are your policy recommendations for reducing suicide rates in 2026?" I would say, "I don't know because the last dates, the last figures that we have that are definitive are from 2023 and a lot has changed since 2023."
So, so realtime data is important now, like Cook County is where Chicago is, right? They have a dashboard and so they have up-to-date, kind of realtime data. There are other places that have realtime data and sometimes knowing locally is more important than knowing nationally because there's so much variation.
But being able to say that it is really important for us to have a more streamlined approach to reporting data through the, the county, the state, and then to the national [00:43:00] is important, I think is, is true. Like during the pandemic, I could go on to the Johns Hopkins COVID dashboard and find out how many people tested positive for COVID the previous day,
Tony: Day.
Jonathan: in, in a parish in Louisiana But I was still looking in 2021 at suicide death rates from 2019,
Tony: 2018, 19.
Jonathan: Yeah. 2018. And I was like, what? So anyway, the, the point here is that, having access to these national news media outlets, I learned that those were opportunities to say things and to kind of put that into the public record. The other thing was that I, I learned a lot about the politics of suicide prevention organizations.
There are, [00:44:00] there are, there are a handful of major organizations out there. Everybody has a vested interest in their organization kind of being on top. But like, so there are all these groups. Right? And they don't play well together in general. And I think that what that, what I learned is that it means that there is a lot of time and energy spent maintaining the organization, but not actually addressing the mission of reducing suicide.
Tony: Wow.
Jonathan: Or, building lives worth living or a world worth living in.
Tony: Yeah. That, and that's probably takes some courage to say that, you know, I think, and, and that, my guess is that's probably true in most things where people are trying to help, they have a particular viewpoint in how to help and they wanna progress that viewpoint.
And then sometimes that kind of takes over as the, but yeah, I, I bet that's not something that's [00:45:00] talked about very much, especially because suicide, it sort of feels like, oh, that shouldn't,
Jonathan: Right.
Tony: you know, that shouldn't create, divisions or somebody being on top or not on top because it's about suicide for goodness sake.
So was that, was it hard to see rifts or things like that? When it comes to suicide?
Jonathan: It was very hard and it was hard to acknowledge that I had gotten caught up. In, in this thing that, I had gotten so focused on the organization that I lost track of the mission. Right? I was spending more time on kind of organizational issues than I was on the whole reason why I was involved in the organization in the first place.
Tony: Hmm. When did you realize that?
Jonathan: I realized that, in 2021, right around the time that AAS collapsed. Right. And I was still president. Right? And, [00:46:00] there was this, you know, the, the, the CEO was fired and, you know, we had, 11 board members resign within two weeks, kind of at a protest. And I stuck around for a little bit longer to try and kind of right the ship and I couldn't.
So then I, I resigned and then three days later, probably my closest colleague at Loyola killed himself.
Tony: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Jonathan: And I, I was, it just, it struck me like that I had been so focused on the politics of this organization that my colleague, who I'd been in close contact with, had clearly been in a suicidal crisis and I had missed it.
And like, it was such a [00:47:00] clear statement that I had, I had, I had sort of lost the thread. Right? And so that was, that was powerful. I, I had already, I had already before that been made aware that I was spending way too much time on the organization, which is why I resigned. But it was just, it was like, it was the, the, the, the final.
Tony: Thank you for sharing that. I'm sad to hear it. How did that realization that, and I, I, by the way, I could see that happening to a, any of us, Jonathan, you know, you're, you're head of an organization, you're supposed to steward that organization. And so I I I, I, I'm sure any of us listening are like that, that could be, could, could, could have been us. But how did that, how did that change you going forward with respect to your mission and organizations [00:48:00] and things like that?
Jonathan: Well, one of the things that I did was I, I retreated from the public eye, which I had very much been in, as I've mentioned, because of, you know, being in the, the national media as president, but also before that, very active on Twitter and social media about things
and, and I, and I was like, okay, I'm spending a lot of time on this and maybe, maybe that's been a bit of a distraction. Right? And so stepped back from that. I did the things that I think lots of people do. I grieved, checked in on friends, you know, I had some trauma bonding experiences that I kind of had to extricate myself from.
And, and then, you know, being involved in these kind of national advisory boards, I found myself [00:49:00] being much more clear on asking the question. Like, so wait, how is what we're doing here like preventing suicide? Or more specifically, how how's what we're doing building a world that people wanna live in?
And, you know, I can't say I've moved the needle very far in, in some of these organizations, but it is, it has been much more, top of mind, than it was. And I'm more mindful not to get caught up in the, the politics, even though it's easy and sometimes fun to do.
Tony: Yeah. Wow. So asking that question, you know, so you're maybe often the person in the room asking, reminding everybody, "draw the line for me between this and actually preventing suicide or making the world a place people wanna live in."
Jonathan: Yeah. [00:50:00]
Tony: Yeah, that's, that sounds like a really, really deep mission that's deep in you.
Jonathan: Absolutely. And, and I will say that I've been, because I was president, because I got used to kind of being in that, kind of that, that arena, like, I'm much more comfortable now reaching out to the folks that are the, the CEOs or the presidents or the heads and being like, "hey, so we talked about this thing.
I was thinking about it later on and I was just wondering like, how does this fit with this mission?" Right? So having the one-on-one, because when I was president, and again, being president of AAS is different than being like the CEO of like Jed Foundation or, or whatever. Because I was president of the board.
I wasn't chair. I wasn't the CEO. Right? And yet, it was a very visceral experience that it doesn't actually matter [00:51:00] what your actual role is. People will be like, "well, you're the president."
Tony: You must be in charge.
Jonathan: You're in charge. "Why? Why is this happening? Why didn't you do anything about this? What blah, blah, blah."
Right? And at the end of the day, I'm a person and so are the other heads of these organizations. And so person to person, I'm gonna reach out. Right? Especially when I'm on like the advisory board because it says that
Tony: They've asked you to.
Jonathan: They've asked me to. So, so, yeah. So,
Tony: Yeah.
So, so you've kind of learned that one-on-one outreach.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: And then you probably appreciated that too, rather than something that's in front of
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: in, in front of everybody. Kind of take a turn back to maybe where we started our, some of our conversation, talking about AI and, and, and, and, and things like that, there, there's a concept from a paper that, refers to algo work, algorithm work.
Could you talk about that and what it means to you and, and, the origin and, and, and how that [00:52:00] relates to social work and, and, and case work?
Jonathan: Yeah. So, so I think this is a really interesting thing. There's a 2025 paper by Ibrahim that contrasts the idea of case work and algo work, right? Algorithm work and, the, you know, the traditional case work approach of there's a client you need to connect services.
It's very sort of individual, you're looking, you know, you're one-on-one with the individual. With an algorithm or the algo work, there's this idea of looking for patterns in both an individual's, history, but also looking at what's going on with a group of people. And I think one of the things that is most interesting about artificial intelligence is not the conversational aspect.
And oftentimes these days when we talk about AI, people default to conversational AI.
Tony: That's what they know. They know chatGpT or whatever [00:53:00] chat, and that's they think of as all of AI.
Jonathan: Right. Or text to image generators or something like that. Right? Avocado chairs. But, there is the predictive analytics side of AI.
There is the, the, the way that artificial intelligence can take, a bunch of data and find patterns. And I think that one of the possible futures for casework, which doesn't have to be done by social workers exclusively. I think anybody who does clinical work ends up doing case work anyway, but is this idea of how do you use the power of AI to monitor data for a large group of people to recognize patterns and then determine how and when to intervene.
So for example, and Ibrahim doesn't talk about this, but I, I will, I will propose a possible Yeah.
Tony: Riff, riff on that's what you do as a jazz musician.
Jonathan: [00:54:00] That's what I do. But, so, the, imagine a future where you have, a caseworker who is monitoring a thousand people and it's based on data from their wearables. Right?
So the quantified self, so we have watches, it's got heart rate, it's got rest, it's got sleep, it's got, you know, where we are,
Tony: contact with other people
Jonathan: it's got and everything like that, right? And, so algo work would be this ability to kind of monitor what's going on and when you see outliers in the data.
Then you have the opportunity to figure out, well, why is that an outlier? You know, why, why is there, stress increased? Right? Because you've got some sort of like conductive thing you're, you know, you're looking at, or, there, there they're, when you pair that with the fact that they haven't been sleeping over the [00:55:00] last three days. Right?
So there are these, there are these ways in which we can think about, almost, preemptively addressing issues before they become real problems because of the ability to use data, to identify patterns and to identify when things are starting to happen. And so for example, let's say you and I are sitting next to each other at an office and we're both being monitored and we, and the person that's monitoring us sees that there is, an increase in our, you know, our stress hormones. Right?
And it's like, oh, well, you know, maybe Tony and Jonathan are kind of arguing, et cetera, et cetera. Well, because they also have data about the fact that I haven't been sleeping well and the last time this happened, it ended up having doing X, Y, and Z. [00:56:00] They might be able to interrupt the interaction that you and I are having by having a popup on the screen saying, "Jonathan, I need you to go do this other thing."
And so it interrupts the pattern. Right?
Tony: That's interesting. I mean, so one, one of the things that I am interested in studying and part of one kind of angle of my research that I'm, in the process of developing is what do we actually, so let's say we could, what do we actually want to do? I'm sure many people would hear that and be like, "ah, no, thank you."
Jonathan: I know, right. The line between utopian and dystopian
Tony: and, and really who likes to be monitored anyway? So I'm curious about your thinking about that. Like, and, and, and it's probably early because I think we're all just as a field thinking about like, oh my gosh, what if these ideas that, you know, what if you actually could, like, what if you could do what you were saying and we were in the same office and,
and there was a stress thing and you hadn't [00:57:00] slept and there's that, and you could like distract you and or set off a fire alarm or something and we both have to go or something. What part of that would we, do you think we'd want to do? And what parts would we just say?
Hmm. We can, but we won't. I'm just curious your own thinking about it.
Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, I think these are, like you said, questions that we haven't grappled with as, as a profession or as a society. I think that there are some things that, as a society, most people have agreed that, if we could prevent them, it's better to prevent them. Interpersonal violence, suicide. Two sort of different things. But you, if we think about, and this is not too far off, like let, let's say that you have like your, your Amazon Alexa, right, or your, [00:58:00] your Google Mini sitting there at the house, right. And they're here and it, and it overhears an argument.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Right? And it interrupts and says, you know, your fridge just told me that you're out of milk.
Would you like me to put in an order for milk? Right. That's a distractor. Maybe That distractor actually, lowered the temperature. And so this couple did not get into an interpersonal violence situation, right. Do, do we want that kind of intervention?
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: I mean, if the alternative is that, there's,
Tony: That violence occurs,
Jonathan: violence occurs, the police are called somebody's arrested, kids are taken away, somebody loses their job.
Right? I think
Tony: These are big, big questions.
Jonathan: All of these things are big questions and I think if you talk to somebody that was, you know, on the receiving end of interpersonal violence, their, their response might be different than [00:59:00] somebody who's thinking abstract.
Tony: Exactly. And
I think this is the work we have to do, is actually hear from people in different experiences
Jonathan: A hundred percent.
Tony: and see what do they think?
Because, 'cause what does it mean for just society to come up with what, who's society, right? It has, there has, but I think this is, these are real things that, I just founded a laboratory called the Personal AI and Robotics and Mental Health Laboratory. But those are the kinds of questions that we're looking to get at, so I was really interested to hear what you're saying.
And I do think that these situations where somebody could get hurt, maybe a good place to start
Jonathan: Mm-hmm.
Tony: those conversations because, sometimes talking about things at the edges help you clarify better at the middles. So I'll be interested to keep talking with you about that and, and many people with many perspectives, in including, as you said, you know, people who have been victims of violence.
Jonathan: Mm-hmm. [01:00:00]
Tony: You know, what do they think? Like is it, are, are they as concerned about privacy? But they might be. And we do know that, in, in the, we, we do know that the technology has often been the instrument of, of, perpetrators. So this, it seems like there could be a benevolent, you know, observer of, of people's, you know, interactions who can intervene to, to, to make it more peaceful.
But we do know that, you know, everything from phones to tracking devices are regularly used, to manipulate and control others too. So that's a whole other part of this. And, you know, I think it's, these, these are, these are conversations that we really need to have and I'm, I'm glad that you are.
And, maybe, and we can.
Jonathan: I'm, I'm excited to have the conversations.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. It's big, it's scary. It's, you know, exciting at the same time. And so, a as, as we, you know, start to, [01:01:00] to land the plane here, I'd like to ask you some questions that we've asked a few of our different guests. And, I take these questions from another well-known podcaster that I listen to, so. And one of them is, what book or books have you gifted to others more than any other?
Jonathan: Well, recently it, it's been the book that Anna Mueller and her co-author, Seth Abberton wrote called, life Under Pressure, the Social Roots of Youth Suicide.
Tony: The Social Roots of Youth Suicide.
Jonathan: Yeah,
I think it's a great book. It's a, and it's, and it's a, it's a great book for professionals and the general public alike. So I actually got, I bought 10 copies and I've been giving it out. So that's actually the book I've been giving out most often.
Tony: Okay. and because we do have, a lot of people in early career who are listening, what, what's your, what advice [01:02:00] do you have for somebody, who's just entering the field of social work, let's say?
Jonathan: Well, I mean, I think one of the big pieces of advice is to, write down what it is you wanted to do when you got here in the first place. Like, why did you enter the field? Why did you, maybe, why did you go to school for social work? Or why did you go for psychology? Like, what is it that, that you wanted to do to write that down and, and keep that as a touchstone because, all of these professions have, these lenses that people learn to put on and we start to learn, oh, well that can't be done because of this, or, we've already tried that and it doesn't work or this. Right?
And so what ends up happening is that I think you have a lot of folks who are really passionate about making the world a better [01:03:00] place, and then the profession professionalizes them into maybe why that can't happen.
Tony: Really?
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tony: Say more about that.
Jonathan: So, for example, there are so many people that go into, social work because they are, passionate about helping kids who've, been abused. Right?
And then they, they go through a couple of internships. Right? And they, they work with kids and they, they, you know, they, maybe they learn that that kids who've been abused are not these angels that everybody loves and just people have been mean to. Right? And so maybe they're, you know, they get a more realistic view of who these kids are.
But then they also realize that there are these organizations that, you know, really are full of good people, but really can't make that much headway on it because it's so much bigger than what any one organization can do. And then they get out and they get their own [01:04:00] job, and then 10 years down the road, they're just another kind of cog in the wheel.
There's been no change in how many kids are abused or how treatment happens. Right? It's just, it, it, they, they end up becoming a worker, right? But their original passion was, I really want to do something different. And so one of my pieces of advice is remind yourself of that. You can still do that. I, I will also, I will also bring up Freud. Right?
Freud did something different. He was like, oh wait, children are not little adults. Right? There is this whole thing about development. Right? Also, maybe there's something under the surface that's important to, to, to think about. Right? He was a radical. Right? Maybe do something radically different.
Tony: Yeah.
Jonathan: Right?
Tony: That's really interesting. I know, really interesting [01:05:00] advice. I hadn't thought about the fact that people kind of get, sort of taught out of their mission and become just sort of part of the, you know, I, I have a feeling though that the, the current generation, I'm very excited about Gen Z the current generations, that's people who are everywhere from, maybe in their late teens into the twenties.
I think it's people born from 1997 till 2010 or something like that. I, I, I could be fact checked on that, but, and they're really focused on impact. I think sometimes in, in difficult ways, because I've seen, like, you know, as an exam-, you know, I've seen people who like ordinary people to do something on, on YouTube and have 4 million people see it.
And so there might be like an unrealistic se expectation of impact sometimes. But I think for the most part, it's a really good impulse to not get caught up in part of [01:06:00] the bureaucracy, but actually, you know, sort of, challenge that and, and, and decide they're gonna do something different and stay focused on that.
So I feel like your, I feel like your advice might really land, with this, with that, current generation that's, that's now in, now in the workforce.
Jonathan: It might land. I have to say I'm skeptical, because, I feel like every generation when they're this age, is sort of unwilling to bend to the will of their elders, and then by the time they get to be the elders, they're just sort of entrenched.
Tony: Hmm.
Jonathan: I would, I would hope that they would be more open to it. but I don't know,
so.
Tony: Okay. All right. Well, we'll see. I'm, I'm optimistic.
Jonathan: I love that.
Tony: Yeah. well, that, that, that's, that, that's helpful. So, [01:07:00] what, of, of the things that we've talked about, you know, one of them was to look for what's not there, and, I'm wondering in terms of the things that we've talked about, what haven't we talked about, what's not there in our conversation that, you might like to share or that is kind of on a front burner for you or you think would be useful for the people who are, who are listening to, to, to this podcast?
Jonathan: Well, you know, we talked about AI. I, you know, I actually think that one of the most promising uses of AI is for professional training. I, I think that there's a lot of risk for people using it as therapists or people using it, like in the ways that we've talked about, right? There's, you know, we, we don't have any, there there's no reason for us to trust the private corporations [01:08:00] that are advancing AI, that they will respect our information, that they won't do something horrendous with it.
And, and so I think we need to be very vigilant about that as professionals who, who are concerned about our client's wellbeing. But I think for professionals training, continuing education, I think we are gonna see, a, a fundamental shift in how things happen. For example, I think that the future of continuing education is gonna be personalized, AI driven, CEUs continuing education
Tony: For sure.
Jonathan: I think that, licensure exams are going to be AI driven and they are going to be based on what people know and what they don't know. And I think that instead of having one test once, I think that it's gonna be repeated on a regular basis. Nursing already does every seven years, I think, they have to get recertified.
But I think that some of [01:09:00] the barriers to professional advancement, competence evaluation, are gonna be removed by AI.
Tony: One controlling corporation.
Jonathan: Exactly.
Tony: Yeah. What, what this, this I, this idea of, of AI opening up competency evaluation, I think is really huge at, at SafeSide Prevention. We've been thinking about this a lot because we have always resisted
having certificates, certification, because it's like, well, how can we certify if we don't get to observe anybody's behavior? So obviously we have certificates of participation, but we haven't certified people in skills because how do you do that when there's thousands and thousands of people? And, and now I think we're, we're developing now that the, the technology and processes to do that.
And I think that's, that's really exciting to get, get moving us closer to, as you would, you know, pointed out like, why are we doing this? Right? It's to actually improve what people are able to do when they are faced with [01:10:00] these, you know, such difficult situations in schools and in hospitals and communities.
So that we, people will really be ready to respond, and, and supported when they do, so. Hey, thanks so much for, for coming down and, and, and talking and, and sharing these things that you've learned. I've learned a lot from, from this conversation and from the time we had, you know, prior to this and, and hopefully more, more to come.
Jonathan: Yeah. Tony, thank you so much. This was great. Thanks for the coffee too. It's delicious.
Tony: Oh, you're welcome. There's more where that came from. Thanks so much.