About

AnneMoss has lived the ultimate tragedy and become an expert on emotional wellness, suicide prevention, and postvention, with a niche focus on youth mental health. She educates through storytelling, and shares hope, coping strategies, and straightforward, practical takeaways.

Her youngest son, Charles, was the funniest, most popular kid in school. As a teen, he wore the mask of a clown to hide depression and used drugs and alcohol to numb his pain. He would become addicted to heroin and take his life in 2015 at age 20. The most devastating loss of her life was a turning point. While it took time to accept that purpose with grace, she has never looked back or regretted that decision.
Putting her grief into action, she authored the award-winning memoir, Diary of a Broken Mind and the Amazon best seller, Emotionally Naked: A Teacher’s Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk with co-writer Dr. Kimberly O’Brien.

A TEDx speaker and one of the top mental health keynote speakers, AnneMoss has been featured in the New York Times, Variety Magazine, and was the first non-clinician invited to speak on youth suicide at the National Institute of Mental Health. A UNC - Chapel Hill alumna, She currently lives in Richmond Virginia and her surviving son Richard is a film editor in LA.
AVAILABLE AT AMAZON & WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD
FREE EBOOK LIBRARY ON MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS

popular Programs

Turning Pain into Purpose: Surviving a son’s depression, addiction & suicide
Program duration: Approximately 60min keynote with optional 30min Q&A

Mental health and suicide education expert, AnneMoss Rogers has built a following on suicide, and the mental illness and addiction that often trigger it. After trying to find help for her once joyful son and rap artist, including wilderness therapy and therapeutic boarding school, Charles became addicted to heroin and died by suicide on June 5, 2015. This presentation is about her journey to healing by dragging an unpopular topic into the spotlight, how giving back has helped her heal, and how a blog community that came together in their shared pain has saved lives in the most surprising and unconventional of ways.

Takeaways:
  • How stigma played a role in Charles’s downward spiral
  • One mom’s unconventional way to save lives
  • Turning grief into action to find a path to healing
  • What to say or do when someone is struggling
  • Forgiving oneself after a loss by suicide

Themes include substance misuse, mental health, suicide, parenting, resilience, coping skills, hope and healing. AnneMoss follows safe messaging reporting guidelines on suicide.
Social Media, Search & Suicide Prevention: How to intervene online when people have lost hope
Program duration: Approximately 60min keynote with optional 30min Q&A

We blame social media for causing the current rise in suicide rates among youth. What is the bigger picture? And what if we online search and social media to save lives? After losing her son, Charles, to suicide, digital marketing expert, Anne Moss Rogers decided to use google search skills she once used to get plumbers more leads online to instead reach those looking up ways to die.
This unique presentation includes the stories, comments, and data that illustrate an innovative intervention practice that has shown remarkable results for saving lives by making a digital connection using internet empathy.

Learning Outcomes:
  • How are people using the internet when they are in crisis and what we can do?
  • Why are so many kids struggling with mental health issues?
  • What to do or say to someone on social media who is in crisis
  • How can we use social media to promote help seeking behavior?

This presentation will include resources on how to promote suicide prevention in social media.
Spotting Students at Risk: The educator’s role in preventing suicide and other self-harming behaviors
Audience: University faculty and K-12 educators
Program duration: 45min to 90min training, virtual or in-person

How can you spot students who might be at risk for suicide? What do you do if you feel like someone is at risk? How do you have difficult conversations? How do you find support?

Whether it’s having a conversation with someone who is stressed or talking to someone who might be suicidal, this presentation will empower educators with the words and tools needed to be the bridge to support. You don’t have to fix this. But you can allow another human to feel seen and heard which is the greatest gift you can offer.

Learning outcomes:
  • How to spot students/co-workers at risk and what to say/do
  • How to be a trusted adult and wisdom guide
  • Simple shifts in teaching that promote wellness and enhance learning
  • The art of listening
  • Self-care for you
  • Links to resources and protocols
The Emotionally Naked® Truth About Student Suicide
Audience: University and K-12 educators, students, faculty, and parents
Program duration: 60min training, virtual or in-person

It was a teacher who first told AnneMoss Rogers that her son, Charles, might be suffering from depression. And it was a teacher who wrote the most heartfelt note after her son died by suicide. School was also the environment that exacerbated his feelings of worthlessness.

Based on the book, Emotionally Naked: A Teacher’s Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk, this presentation will empower educators, parents, stakeholders with the skills to reduce this threat to life. Educators will learn the cryptic and often veiled ways students cry for help, how to respond and what to do. Attendees will also learn ways in which teachers have modeled and embedded SEL competencies in learning and facilitated connection, the foundation of suicide prevention.

Learning outcomes:
  • Real life signs of suicide in youth and what to say/do
  • Examples of how other teachers have seamlessly built connection, mindfulness, and coping skills into their classroom culture
  • The single most important skill to preventing suicide
  • Lesser-known transitions when students are more at risk and how to lessen the risk
Youth Suicide Prevention, Intervention, Postvention
Audience: K-12 and university faculty and support personnel
Program duration: Half-day (3.5hr) training

Participants will have the opportunity to work through scenarios and discussions to strengthen their ability to gain insight, tools, and resources to work through one of the most difficult topics those working with student’s face. This empowers educators to speak on an uncomfortable topic. While it focuses on students, the strategies for adults and co-workers are similar.

This 3.5-hour training will focus in three parts on:

Part I – Prevention:
  • Signs to look for in young people ages 6-25. What to look for in artwork, on social media sites, and papers students write.
  • Going upstream to prevent students from getting to crisis. A review of case studies of how teachers have integrated coping and critical thinking into their curriculum and how that helps kids build resilience and coping skills.
  • Creating a suicide safe environment (means restriction such as breakaway closet rods)

Part II – Intervention
  • What to say, what to do, scripts and role play on how to respond.
  • Scripts for effectively and supportively addressing conversations and situations with students in an age appropriate and sensitive way.
  • How to encourage students over 18 to talk to their parents if appropriate giving them some agency in the process so they feel more grounded in their own care

Part III- Postvention
  • The top errors most administrators make after a school suicide that can put other vulnerable students at risk.
  • How to support staff and students in their grief after a suicide of a teacher or student.
  • What to do and say to the parent of a deceased child. (Downloadable script template)
  • What educators can say to students who accuse teachers of holding back or lying when the parent has asked that the cause of death not be disclosed.
  • How to prevent contagion and cohort suicide.
  • Memorial guidelines and creating a commemoration policy
Early Intervention Works: Mental Health education for birth to 5 years
Audience: Early educators and state agency employees (caseworkers)
Time: 45 minutes to 1.5 hours or a series. Virtual, in person or hybrid.

Audience: Early educators and state agency employees (caseworkers)
Program duration: 45min to 90min training (or a series), virtual, in-person, or hybrid

It was a teacher who first told AnneMoss Rogers that her son, Charles, might be suffering from depression. And it was a teacher who wrote the most heartfelt note after her son died by suicide. There were early signs that Charles might have future struggles, yet few knew what effective intervention looked like or what to do.
Schools and pre-schools have something few other environments have and that’s opportunity for early intervention and genuine human connection. This is the most valuable currency in today’s education community. How can we leverage those opportunities to bolster a culture of child wellness, build resilience, and give kids the tools they need to manage life going forward?

Learning outcomes:
  • What are the risk factors and how can pre-school educators strengthen the protective factors?
  • How to spot kids early who need extra support.
  • Age-appropriate ways to have challenging conversations (talk bubbles or scripted role play conversations)
  • The single most important skill to teach preschoolers for emotional regulation.
  • Early intervention case study that started with a pediatrician saying, “He’ll grow out of it,” and a mom who didn’t accept that answer.
  • A case study of how a kindergarten educator builds emotional awareness and coping skills into her classroom.
  • Games and activities plus other resources to bolster early emotional wellness.

/

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
AnneMoss Rogers is probably the most resilient person I know. She has managed to turn grief into action... I had the pleasure of presenting with her at the Pediatric Academic Societies conference and her part was absolutely the best. She received a standing ovation. I have been to this conference for two decades and I have never seen any speaker receive a standing ovation. She was powerful. She was moving.

Video Testimonial

Lisa Horowitz, PhD, MPH
Staff Scientist/Clinical Psychologist
National Institute of Mental Health

MORE REVIEWS

Title
/
Bestselling Author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
AVAILABLE AT AMAZON & WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

Want to talk with us about AnneMoss Rogers?

Fill out this inquiry form and we will reach out within the next business day.
    Note: We never use phone numbers for marketing. If you'd rather not provide a phone number, then please be sure to watch your junk mail folder for a few days after you submit this form.