For many years I held conferences on Suicide Prevention and Intervention. It became evident very quickly that people attending the conferences were getting hand cramps trying to write all the information down, or even worse, they just gave up and quit taking notes. Someone suggested that I write it all down in narrative form and make a book from those writings. That seemed like a good idea - the book came out in 1989 and has been used in many different states, and even different countries, ever since.