September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time to share resources and stories in an effort to shed light on this highly taboo and stigmatized topic. Founded by beauty entrepreneur April Peck, SAVE ME FROM hair treatment line was developed with the mission of advocating suicide prevention after Peck lost her own sister to suicide. Realizing hairstylists are sometimes in the position to be the first responder in a mental health crisis, Peck is promoting a dialogue around mental health and suicide prevention.

Save Me From’s mission is to save hair, save lives and empower. They not only donate 10% of net income to organizations who help save people in crisis, but they help train stylists in how to identify suicidal warning signs.

“Often when someone is suicidal, they give us these hints and clues that they are having a hard time,” Peck says. “But because it’s difficult to talk about, we can hear them but still tend to minimize their feelings.”

Peck says that because clients often tell stylists their deepest secrets, stylists may be able to identify changes that might signal a problem. “It’s a myth that asking people if they’re feeling suicidal will put it in their head. If the stylist is used to seeing someone regularly, and now they notice this person seems to be in crisis, and is talking more about trouble in their life and how stressed they are,  it provides an opportunity not to judge but to show them you care, and to refer them to a place where they can get help.”

When Peck started to research programs that teach about suicide prevention strategies for anyone with a friend, family member, or co-worker (so, something for everyone) she discovered QPR.

QPR, short for Question, Persuade, and Refer, is an organization that has created the equivalent to CPR.  When someone is QPR trained, they are able to learn the basics of how to identify the signs that someone is considering suicide, and the basic, helpful responses and resources to provide.  As she became more involved in QPR, she discussed with her team how this program could be implemented. Obviously, the team members would be trained, but then what? That’s when salons became a part of the solution.

“Sometimes people trust their stylists more than friends and family. More often than not, a stranger or someone you only know on a professional level has less judgement than a friend or family and we want those people to be able to pick up on suicidal behavioral cues,” says April.

Peck reached out to one of the Salon Today’s Top 200 salons (awarded two years in a row!): Twiggs Salon in Minnesota. In January this year, April traveled from Seattle to Minneapolis to officially train their stylists on QPR.

“We are so thankful that Twiggs Salon has seen how powerful this training can be for their incredible stylists who care so much about their clients on every level," Peck says.

SAVE ME FROM hope that this is only the beginning of a wave of beauty professionals getting trained in something so important and life-saving. SAVE ME FROM continues to offer salons and spas virtual trainings to become QPR certified and realizes this is just one way they can continue to spread hope through such challenging times.

Learn more about SAVE ME FROM

To effectively treat hair, we must get to the root of damage. Most hair masks do just that, they “mask” damage, they don’t fix it. SAVE ME FROM takes a targeted approach in repairing hair by replenishing what’s depleted in damaged hair based upon its source. After identifying the six main sources of hair damage, SAVE ME FROM created six Tip to Root Hair Reboots™ that reconstruct hair and scalp with Fenugen, Bond Reboot™ and the correct blend of proteins, lipids and nutrients.