Grantee Types: Garrett Lee Smith Campus

Providence College will establish a comprehensive, integrated wellness promotion and suicide prevention program, offering a full spectrum of preventative interventions, ranging from the individual to the ecological. The multi-systemic array of evidence-based strategies includes gatekeeper training (online and in-person), crisis response planning, family engagement, network building, mental health screening, community-building, promoting hotlines, and facilitating access to mental health services. We will identify and support individuals at high risk as well as bring resources and access to vulnerable groups. A public health approach will be used to establish a new level of knowledge and understanding about suicide prevention for the entire community and enhance our readiness to support those who are most vulnerable. We will introduce the Kognito online gatekeeper training module in order to build skills and help students effectively engage and refer peers who are experiencing distress. We will build on the gatekeeper paradigm by developing a new in-person gatekeeper training curriculum named PC Lifelines. PC-Lifelines will use current research to increase effectiveness of current gatekeeper models. Integrating faith-based values is a unique component of PC-Lifelines which is appropriate to Providence College, and may also be of particular interest to the hundreds of faith-based colleges and universities in the United States. The online and in-person training will be evaluated to determine possible advantages to combined training. Outcomes of this evaluation and development initiative will be widely disseminated.

Consistent with the College mission, we are determined to promote “the human flourishing of each member of the campus community.” Outreach initiatives and interventions will specifically seek out those groups most at risk for suicide and most likely to experience disparities in access to health services. These include students with mental health challenges as well as students of color, Native American students, first generation students, LGBTQ students, international students, and veterans. Our project will involve these groups as partners to build trust and to help develop suitable educational and intervention approaches. We will engage persons from diverse backgrounds with lived experience to share their stories, model recovery, reduce stigma, increase help-seeking, and inspire hope. This project will bring multiple campus resources to a new level of integration and collaboration. It will also be undertaken in partnership with off-campus organizations such as the National Association of Mental Illness/Rhode Island Chapter and the Rhode Island Department of Health. Providence area hospitals, mental health practices, and substance abuse clinics will be brought into our network of resources so we can offer coordinated and integrated care for our students. We will establish protocols, networks, training programs, and practices that will bring our suicide prevention capacity to a new level. It will become part of the culture at Providence College, a sustainable and meaningful confirmation of our commitment to health and safety.

Plymouth State University (PSU) seeks to use a Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) grant to utilize local, state and national resources to build infrastructure, strengthen a climate of help seeking, reduce stigma, and increase the skills and capacity for responding to students at risk for suicide. Using best practice models offered by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, this proposal will integrate the resources from the National Alliance for Mental Health (NAMI) NH Connect Project; PSU TIGER (Theatre Integrating Guidance Education and Responsibility) program; and on and off-campus providers into a comprehensive approach called TEAM: Training, Education, Arts and Mental health.

Connect is a national best practice model consisting of training, protocols, and networking designed to build a cohesive infrastructure for suicide response. The TIGER Transitions Project is an original music production based on the writings solicited from PSU students about the issues they face. The writings are then transposed into performances that build awareness about mental health issues and suicide risk; promote more effective help seeking behavior; and reduce stigma. TIGER performances will be followed by talk back sessions facilitated by Connect trainers.

The Campus Suicide Prevention Advisory Board (CSPAB) will oversee and guide TEAM. This coalition will include campus administration, counseling staff, representatives from key departments, and students. Connect staff and on and off-campus providers, under the direction of CSPAB, will offer training, consultation, protocols and forums on campus to develop the capacity to respond to students at risk and improve access to resources. These efforts will be supplemented by other educational programs and training and by the involvement of key stakeholders. Additionally, resources relating to suicide prevention such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) will be disseminated to promote awareness, help seeking and wellness through campus activities and outreach. Students involved in these aspects will ensure that the material is culturally appropriate and disseminated in ways most likely to reach students. The TEAM Project is expected to involve up to 6,000 people by the end of the grant period.

Based on high suicide rates of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender students; veterans and military members; and students from rural backgrounds, these populations will be targeted for outreach. The end result will be a campus and community environment that actively encourages stigma reduction and help seeking, reinforced by consistent, sustained best practices for suicide prevention and postvention and local and NSPL resources to support all students.

In response to the growing issues related to depression and substance abuse, the goal of Penn State Altoona’s suicide prevention project is to tighten the safety net already in place by enhancing existing programs and adding several innovative programs focusing on early identification of high-risk students and appropriate intervention. These approaches will benefit not only the target population of high-risk students but the campus community at large. The campus culture represents individuals of diverse cultures, ethnicities, genders, ages, sexual orientations, abilities, and sets of personal values. This project will reflect issues of diversity and will seek to increase utilization of counseling services through coordinated activities and initiatives offered across campus to allow us to better reach all of our students.

National and local data clearly identify depression as impacting quality of life as well as academic success. In response to this, Penn State Altoona has designed a program that willÂ? develop training programs for students and campus personnel, create a campus community network, develop and implement educational seminars, promote linkage to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and prepare informational material for families. Specific suicide prevention objectives include the development of an internal mechanism for the identification and reporting of students in distress, training of faculty and staff in the role of gatekeeper, and improvement of awareness and effective intervention and referral throughout the campus community.

Two key innovative approaches that were developed include the Early Alert System and a web-based training program for faculty/staff and students. The Early Alert program helps to identify students displaying academic or emotional distress and provides support and referral information to those students. The web-based training program for faculty/staff and students focuses on identifying symptoms of distress, normalizing approach, and building confidence and skill related to referral. This product by Kognito uses gaming technology to effectively train participants through virtual role-play. We have also developed two 60- to 90-second trailers which are linked to a stress reduction and mental health awareness website which assists in awareness education and emotional management.Â?

Currently we are working with John Jay University in New York City and the Jed Foundation to develop a research study looking at parent attitudes, beliefs, and actions related to mental health issues in the student college population. This study will be a followup to the Jed Foundation parent survey in 2007. We expect to launch the survey in February 2011. Additional goals of this project are to increase the awareness of issues of behavioral health by developing educational companion materials. Finally, this project will allow Penn State Altoona to take full advantage of the data that is gathered by expanding the analysis to focus specifically on increased utilization of services and increased help seeking.

Pennsylvania College of Technology (Penn College) is requesting funds to develop a campus-wide, comprehensive suicide prevention and intervention program. This program will include a referral network, gatekeeper training, student screenings, training for faculty and staff, social norms and social media campaigns, promotion of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, development of a suicide response plan, and programming for parents and families. The underserved or at-risk groups on which Penn College will focus its efforts are the LGBT community, racial and ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, and veterans. To oversee the project, Penn College is convening an Advisory Board of internal and external entities. The six goals of the project are:

Goal 1: Formalize a robust, networked coalition of campus and community suicide prevention resources.

Goal 2: Increase the number of students accessing mental health and substance abuse services and enhance screening of students.

Goal 3: Systematize faculty and staff professional development opportunities to engage the campus community in suicide awareness, prevention, and intervention.

Goal 4: Systematize a comprehensive, ongoing educational campaign for all students, as well as identified target subpopulations to engage the campus community in awareness, prevention, and intervention to address mental health and suicide.

Goal 5: Enhance campus community crisis response and intervention, including linkage to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Goal 6: Engage and educate parents and families as partners in the support of student mental health and suicide prevention.

With funds, Penn College will screen approximately 1,000 students annually. We will provide gatekeeper training to 200 students, faculty, and staff annually; over the grant period, approximately 450 faculty and staff will receive training; 1,500 parents will be reached annually; and by Year 3, more than 5,000 students will experience some level of mental health promotion or suicide prevention messaging. The Penn College community has experienced 11 suicides of current and former students over the last 18 months and needs funding and outside expertise to support our efforts to enhance and develop a suicide prevention and intervention plan. Overall, we expect to see an increase of 2% of students annually accessing campus Counseling Services, and we anticipate an increase of 15% in student awareness about suicide, mental health, and available services on the triennial student survey.

Pace University Counseling Center NY serves its diverse campus population by providing a wide range of counseling services to meet the mental health needs of its students. The Counseling Center has developed expertise in addressing the academic, professional, and psychological concerns of a student population that is rich in cultural, ethnic, and identity diversity and plans to provide mental health education and outreach services to the larger community of New York City and our Westchester campus. Consequently, Pace University has implemented Project Outreach Prevention Education Network (OPEN), the goals of which are to:

1. Develop a Multicultural Competence and Response Kit (MCRK) that will facilitate both didactic and self-study for the purpose of developing skill in crisis and suicide intervention with students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
2. Develop a network of active connections to the mental health units of New York-area hospitals. This network will be used to create additional student-competent mental health resources for the Pace community. It will also be used to disseminate in-service didactic trainings to sensitize hospital-based personnel to the unique psychological aspects of the college experience in the prevention of possible mental illness or the likelihood of suicide with students.
3. Develop a Multicultural Competence and Prevention Kit (MCPK) that will provide the focal point of didactic trainings with other New York-area college and university mental-health units in fostering awareness, sensitivity, and education regarding the impact of such variables as stigma, discrimination, and hate crimes as these contribute to depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide within an education community.
4. Advertise and integrate the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline information into first-year orientation and outreach with Pace University students, faculty, and staff.
5. Develop both a brochure and a Counseling Center website-based program designed to address parents in promoting effective recognition of all of the following:

Help-seeking behavior
The signs and symptoms of psychological distress and the possible contemplation of suicide
The impact of stigma on preventing effective acknowledgement and utilization of mental health services
Other mental health aspects of the college experience

To date the MCRK and MCPK have been completed, trainings are underway, the parent website is live, and the brochure has been completed. Research is underway to assess incoming student mental health needs through surveying all first-year students.

The overall goal of this project is to create an effective and sufficient suicide prevention infrastructure for the OSU-Cascades campus in order to support student mental health and to identify, support and refer students at risk of suicide and those in crisis. Key activities include the development of policies and procedures to support students at risk of suicide or who are in nonsuicidal crisis, development of linkages between University services and those provided by the broader community, the creation of web-based information and supports, training in suicide prevention for faculty, staff, and students, and student generated projects to promote well being, help seeking and stigma reduction.

Although our campus population is primarily Caucasian, activities will seek to respond to the needs of higher risk populations such as veterans, American Indian, students who identify as LGBTQ and Hispanic females. OSU-Cascades expected influx of international students, particularly from China and Saudi Arabia will also receive special attention as they make the cultural transition from their home culture to the United States. With the anticipated growth in our campus, we expect to serve approximately 2500 students over the course of the grant period.

Project objectives include:

• Develop Student Support protocols for assisting students identified as at risk of suicide.
• Develop Crisis Intervention protocols for assisting students identified as in imminent risk of suicide (to? include safety planning and continuity of care for those hospitalized or seen in the emergency room).
• Develop Postvention protocols for supporting the campus in the event of a student’s death by suicide.
• Develop web-based supports to promote student mental health, help-seeking and stigma reduction.
• Train students, faculty, and staff on (1) identification of students at risk of suicide and (2) referral of at risk students using grant-developed Student Support and Crisis Intervention protocols, and (3) cultural competence.
• Develop culturally and linguistically appropriate informational materials for students and families.
• Document and assess programmatic efforts in order to determine (1) numbers of students, faculty, and staff trained in suicide prevention, (2) numbers of students identified and referred for services, (3) number of university-community collaborations established to support student well being and suicide prevention, (4) number of students exposed to mental health promotion messages.

Accomplishing these objectives will greatly increase the capacity of OSU-Cascades to respond to the mental health needs of its students.

The Suicide Prevention Program at Oklahoma State University-Okmulgee, Oklahoma, is a proactive program designed to identify students who are at-risk and in need of behavioral health education support. To promote over-all effectiveness in improving quality of life, education will be implemented through the creation of a comprehensive public health approach that engages key players in the college and community agencies. A safety-net will be established by infrastructure building through implementation of the six allowable activities.

The operational goals of the Student Assistance Program are to:

• Provide educational and training services to the college community in areas of suicide awareness, substance abuse issues, interpersonal skills, group counseling, and stress management.
• Train and counsel student clients in effective techniques for managing stress, substance abuse issues, dysfunctional families, and peer relationships.
• Assist students in developing a positive self-concept.
• Train and counsel student clients in interpersonal skills.
• Provide an intervention service for those students who are identified as having substance abuse problems.
• Provide an intervention service for those students who are identified as having difficulties dealing with stress, dysfunctional families, peers, and personal and school related adjustments.
• Facilitate and promote long term counseling for students who are identified as being in need of such service.

The management goals of the Student Assistance Program are to:

• Develop and maintain links with appropriate outside agencies, which can assist in the delivery of program services.
• Organize and implement an effective internal referral system.
• Organize and implement an effective external referral system.
• Organize and manage a communication and record keeping system, which promotes and enhances a team approach to the operation of the program.

The program services are provided in four venues: educational services, intervention services, counseling services, and group services.