Grantee Types: Garrett Lee Smith Campus

The Hunter College Suicide Prevention Program seeks to develop a comprehensive suicide prevention strategy at Hunter College of the City University of New York. As part of an urban, public university, Hunter College has a racially and ethnically diverse population of about 23,000 students (over 16,000 undergraduates), with over 60% of students coming from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds. Previous data from the College suggest that about 21% of undergraduates have thought about suicide in the previous year and 9-10% have made a previous suicide attempt, with rates distributed about equally across racial and ethnic groups, and with LGBTQI students showing even higher rates. However, racial and ethnic minority students underutilize treatment at Hunter, relative to their White peers, and reasons at-risk students have previously given for not seeking treatment include preferring to deal with problems on their own,not knowing if problems warrant treatment, and, for some ethnic minorities, preferences for seeking help from family or friends. Using these data, along with proposed screenings of incoming freshmen and transfer students, this program seeks to engage key student groups and partners across the college to 1) increase training in suicide prevention and mental health promotion for faculty, staff, and students; 2) increase collaboration among campus and community with the aim of suicide prevention and mental health awareness; 3) enhance available information on suicide prevention, substance misuse, and other mental health problems for students, faculty, staff, and family members; and 4) Increase help-seeking behavior amonghigher-risk and underutilizing student groups. This will be accomplished through engagement of key partners in the Psychology Department, Counseling & Wellness Services, Student Affairs,and the School of Public Health, along with members of student organizations, including LGBTQI, veteran, and associations of racial/ethnic minority students; gatekeeper training usingthe Kognito interactive suite to train increased numbers of faculty, staff, and students to identify students at risk and to refer them for treatment; to adapt educational materials to be distributed tofaculty, staff, students, and family members; and through the development of a credit-bearing course in the Psychology Department to train upper-level students as peer counselors and todevelop peer-led public health campaigns to educate the Hunter community about risk factors for suicidal behavior and mental health problems, including substance misuse, and to reduce thestigma surrounding mental health treatment seeking.

Grizzlies Savings Lives! A GGC Campus Suicide Prevention Initiative is designed to promote mental health wellness and help-seeking among Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) students through multi-tiered outreach and partnership efforts. The strategies will include: (1) conducting the Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) Gatekeeper training; (2) showing the “Truth about Suicide video”; and (3) promoting the use of e-technology for mental health screening and resources.

Founded in 2005 as part of the University System of Georgia, GGC has experienced exponential growth over the last nine years. In fall 2014, GGC had a student population of 10,828, of which 60.1% are minorities. About 54.7% of the student population is female and 45.30% are male; 21% are non-traditional students; and 11% are veterans. Over 50% of GGC students have received Pell grants. GGC has 393 full-time faculty and 729 full-time staff members serving its student population. In 2014, the GGC reported two on-campus suicides and an increasing number of threats of suicide. GGC remains deeply committed to the health and wellbeing of its students and the GGC community with its limited resources and developing infrastructure.With additional funds from SAMHSA, the College will be able to fill the gaps in and enhance its suicide prevention efforts. Through this project, we plan to deliver training and program activities that are culturally sensitive to our diverse student population and the culture of the project’s target populations (first-generation, international, LBTQ, and veteran students). The goals and objectives of the strategies are as follows: The gatekeeper training will increase knowledge about signs of suicide, train participants to ask about suicide, and increase participants comfort in making a referral. By project’s end, we aim to certify approximately seven project staff on QPR Instruction and present QPR Gatekeeper training to about 300 faculty, student leaders, and staff. The outreach efforts for students aim to reduce stigma associated with mental health concerns and help create a culture of help-seeking. We aim to show a suicide prevention video in approximately 30 Choices for Life classes, show a suicide prevention video to students who reside in the resident halls, members of student organizations, coaches and student athletes. E-technology and an online screening tool will helpincrease students’ self-awareness of mood and have quick access to relaxation techniques and counseling resources through Relief Link and CollegeResponse. E-technology will help provide enhanced and sustainable resources on suicide prevention to the GGC community. A well-designed assessment plan will ascertain: (1) the extent to which we have achieved our goals and objectives; (2) the gaps, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and barriers concerning our program, activity, and partnerships; (3) the impact and outcomes of our activities on our students and the target populations; and (4) any additional data needed to help us make more informed decisions.

To meet the major challenge of reaching students at risk for suicide but unknown to campus mental health agencies, the George Washington (GW) Counseling Center proposes to empower students through a multidimensional awareness/educational campaign; to build a web of supportive and skilled faculty, staff and student leaders through comprehensive training/consultative programs; and to sustain a caring community through enhanced identification, referral, and emergency services. GW will engage existing resources across campus to create a multifaceted approach to reaching at-risk students. Multiple media will be used to permeate the campus community with constructive messages each semester. Repetition within poster, flyer, newspaper, radio and electronic billboard publicity will be designed to create a strong positive connection with University Counseling Center (UCC) services. Key faculty, academic advisors, university police, residential life staff, student service staff, and student leaders will be trained to recognize symptoms of students in distress, to respond skillfully and to refer appropriately those students to campus resources. The intention and hope of this proposal is to reach GW students by providing education about mental health issues, empowering a web of community members to identify and respond to students in need, encouraging and supporting these students in taking responsibility for their mental health care by accessing appropriate services, and strengthening campus services to address perceived needs. Evaluation of this suicide prevention project will focus on the impact of the proposed interventions, both in terms of number of individuals meaningfully served as well as new learning and behavior resulting from project interventions.

George Mason University currently has more than 32,000 students and is located within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and as such Mason’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) serves a highly diverse group of students. However, some groups are less likely to seek out mental health services and be seen at CAPS. Unfortunately, these same groups are often at higher risk of mental health related concerns and suicide. The agency provides targeted outreach services to these groups, which include international students, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, students with physical/learning disabilities, returning veterans, and men.

Mason is currently engaged in several suicide prevention activities, and much of the suicide prevention efforts have been initiated and implemented by the CAPS clinical staff. The current Mason CARES: (Campus Awareness, Referral and Education for Suicide Prevention) Suicide Prevention Program aims to expand current programming in several key areas. First, given the profound impact that suicide has upon the entire university community, it is our belief that no single department on campus can take sole responsibility for suicide prevention. Therefore, we plan to develop a multidisciplinary Suicide Prevention Team comprised of key stakeholders on campus that will generate campus wide initiatives targeting education, training, development of administrative policies, and campus needs assessment around mental health and suicide prevention issues. Second, we intend to implement a broad based training component by expanding upon our current gatekeeper training of faculty, staff, and students to include a new multi-method approach. It is our belief that a one size fits all training approach does not meet the needs of diverse a campus like Mason. Third, based on the data that peers reach out to other peers for support when dealing with suicidal ideation, it is clear that students must become a critical intervention point in the effort to prevent suicide. With this in mind, we propose developing a mental health awareness and suicide prevention Peer Educator Program. Peer Educators will play a central role in developing and implementing programming, media, and awareness campaigns aimed at reducing the stigma around mental health and suicide prevention for the Mason community. Finally, it is our intention to develop both active and passive suicide prevention awareness campaigns on campus, which will include creating educational material, handouts, and media targeting students and their families during orientation programming.

Fordham University will develop, coordinate and implement a multi-modal and comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program to enhance overall student mental health and reduce suicide attempts, completions and related risk factors, such as anxiety, depression and substance misuse. While the entire Fordham community of over 15,000 students and 3000 faculty and staff will be exposed to the program, particular attention will be paid to students who under-utilize mentalhealth services and/or have been identified as high-risk by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (NAASP), including veteran, LGBT, international, and ethnic and racial minority students.

With a Campus Suicide Prevention Grant from SAMHSA, Fordham will strengthen its existing infrastructure to develop, implement, and evaluate ecologically and culturally appropriate population-based prevention, education and training interventions to promote mental health and mitigate suicide risk on campus. Guided by recommendations from the NAASP, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center and the Jed Foundation, these interventions will include the following strategic goals and objectives:

Goal 1: Enhance student coping and resiliency skills by (1) delivering mindfulness based stress reduction seminars to improve student distress tolerance and emotional regulation; (2)purchasing, customizing and disseminating the Stressbusters Wellness mobile application; and(3) providing broad-based psycho-educational seminars to promote holistic health and wellness.

Goal 2: Increase identification, support and referral of students in distress and/or at increased suicide risk by (1) strengthening linkages and collaborations with campus and community stakeholders; (2) promoting utilization of Kognitos At-Risk for University and College Faculty and Students gatekeeper trainings; and (3) implementing the Student Support Network suicideprevention peer education program.

Goal 3: Increase help seeking behaviors among students by (1) improving partnerships and collaborations with targeted campus constituencies; (2) incorporating Pace Universitys Suicide Prevention Multicultural Competence Kit into educational and training programs; and (3) developing a peer driven, multimedia public awareness campaign to reduce stigma, shame and misinformation associated with mental health services.

Goal 4: Improve student access to mental health services by (1) increasing community awareness and visibility of on and off campus entry points for mental health care, including the NationalSuicide Prevention Lifeline; and (2) developing case management protocols and enhancing community provider referral network.