Grantee Types: Garrett Lee Smith Campus

The University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst Suicide Prevention program serves a population of more than 25,000 including internal key constituents such as Residence Life, UMass Police, the Dean of Students Office, faculty members, athletic coaches, members of student support services including support services for students of color, and members of University Health Services. Other external key constituents include members of our community provider network, community first responders, staff at large residential off-campus complexes where many students live, and parents and significant others in the students� lives. Our program seeks to expand the number of key constituencies, on and off campus, trained as gatekeepers and educated about suicide prevention and environmental strategies to reduce stigma associated with help-seeking behavior for mental health issues. We aim to continue to offer the gatekeeper training developed by SU Counseling Center staff, as well as to develop a comprehensive, structured, well-rounded, culturally sensitive outreach program. The UMass Suicide Prevention program is committed to provide culturally sensitive material and information through trainings and other prevention efforts. Additionally, the development of additional methods of disseminating knowledge about suicide prevention through online training, educational seminars, culturally responsive materials, and environmental strategies will help maximize the student�s mental health in order to reduce self-destructive behaviors and reduce risk for completed suicide. Efforts will also focus on institutionalizing suicide prevention across the campus. We will be working to enhance basic suicide prevention and intervention skills across campus and off-campus constituencies, promote early recognition and intervention, develop and implement standardized and culturally responsive intervention and referral protocols and educational materials, and engage in suicide prevention efforts that are institutionalized on campus and in the local community to support sustainability. We will also be making training materials/videos more accessible to individuals that may be unable or unlikely to attend on-campus trainings.Collaboration with other campus agencies and student-led organizations has been crucial to the success of already implemented programs. With the help of the New Student Orientation Group, we developed a workshop for all new students and their parents focusing on self-care, staying connected, and being active on campus. We partnered with a peer education group called Not Ready for Bedtime Players to perform a skit on raising awareness about the signs and symptoms of suicidal ideation and the risk factors for suicide. Finally, with the help of the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health, we developed a campus-wide event around National Survivors of Suicide Day, and we are planning a stress management event to take place during finals week.

The University of Maryland College Park (UM) is highly concerned about addressing student’s mental health needs and is committed to providing them with easily accessible services. To this end, UM proposes the Suicide Awareness Health Education and Training (SAHET) project, a comprehensive suicide prevention program that will unite a variety of stakeholders, namely, administrators, clinicians, student representatives and researchers toward a common goal: to address and reduce suicidal behaviors among our students. Led by the University Health Center (UHC), and supported by a team of multidisciplinary experts, the project will: 1) create and implement a comprehensive strategic suicide prevention plan with guidance from a Campus Advisory Board; 2) create research-based written and web-based informational materials to increase awareness among the campus community of the magnitude of suicidal behavior, recognition, risk assessment, social, family and mental health correlates, and materials that promote the reduction of stigma associated with help-seeking behaviors; 3) hold structured training programs for a broad spectrum of campus professionals who come in contact withstudents; 4) hold educational seminars for students and their parents on suicide prevention, risk assessment and crisis response. Pre-post assessments will be conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the implementation strategy and user-friendliness of materials as well as measure the knowledge gained in a number of topic areas. The ultimate goal of the project will be to centralize mental health referrals to the UHC that will be tracked through administrative data monitoring. We will also promote the linkage to already existing state and local hotlines as well as make available the wealth of information already available at the national level on depression and suicide awareness and prevention.

The Touchstone Suicide Prevention Program provides suicide prevention for all 12,000 students of the University of Maine, a rural Land and Sea Grant College in Orono, Maine. Faculty, staff, and students will be trained to identify and intervene with students at risk. Web-based assessment, education, referral, and electronic communication will lower the barrier to service for students at risk while facilitating access to mental health and other University resources.

Two primary goals underlying all aspects of the Touchstone Program are 1) to reduce barriers to services and resources and 2) to promote both help-seeking behavior and engagement by students at risk or in need.

Primary activities will include: 1) Training ten percent of faculty and staff as “gatekeepers” capable of identifying, intervening and referring at risk students to professional health care providers and other university resources; 2) Selecting a group of students to participate in a class and receive training to become Touchstone Peers. These students will be trained as “gatekeepers”; work to decrease stigma associated with mental illness and help seeking; and help to shift the campus climate by increasing student engagement, belongingness and 3) Integrating web-based technology and electronic communication as a means to lower barriers and promote access to mental health services and information.

When building the Touchstone Suicide Prevention Program, we took into account that students who are engaged are less likely to attempt or die by suicide than those who are isolated and marginalized. Therefore, the Touchstone Suicide Prevention Program integrates crisis intervention with efforts to engage students who would not otherwise be engaged.

Cards SPEAK (Suicide Prevention, Education, Awareness, and Knowledge) at the University of Louisville (UofL) is a new initiative by departments across UofL campuses that directly addresses the critical need to develop a comprehensive suicide prevention education program. This three-year infrastructure development project will strengthen UofL’s existing efforts in responding to those of our 20,000+ students who exhibit suicidal behavior, including approximately 1,715 students who identify as LGBT and 827 as veterans,as well as offer training to student leaders, 6,500+ faculty and staff , and families, who are often the ones who are first to notice and respond to suicidal behavior.

Implementation of Cards SPEAK will increase University of Louisville’s capacity to offer a coordinated and culturally competent campus message to increase the UofL community’s overall mental health awareness, with an emphasis on suicide prevention. Through coordination of campus efforts, Cards SPEAK will (1) deliver training and awareness campaigns to students and faculty/staff with data collection in order to evaluate effectiveness; (2) focus on creating campus- specific suicide prevention trainings to the at-risk populations of LGBT students and military and veteran students; (3) promote families’ understanding of and response to their students’ signs of distress; and (4) enhance campus and community partnerships in the effort of responding to students’ mental health needs; and (5) develop a sustainable infrastructure to support coordinated campus-wide efforts that emphasize students’ strong mental health.The project will supplement the established efforts of our Campus Health Service’s participation in the National College Depression Partnership (NCDP), which emphasizes the benchmarking of healthcare quality through ongoing measurement of outcomes with validated depression severity measures. The goals and objectives of the Cards SPEAK project focus on primarily utilizing Kognito training modules with students and faculty/staff but also building upon training which already exists through campus or community providers, including QPR, Mental Health First Aid, and the Koru Mindfulness model.

The goal is to educate at minimum 2,000 campus community members annually. A proposed SAMHSA-funded Project Coordinator, in consultation with our campus Suicide Prevention Advisory Committee, will work to ensure UofL meets established project benchmarks. Data will be tracked and disseminated to UofL senior leadership as well as other constituents. Community engagement will focus on awareness campaigns that exist within the Louisville metro area and will build upon partnerships with local mental health treatment providers to increase capacity for needs presented through the project.

The University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) HELPS (Helping Educators and Learners Prevent Suicide) project will support a comprehensive and coordinated campus effort designed to educate faculty, staff, incoming freshmen and their families, as well as the student body at large, about the risk and protective factors associated with suicide and suicide ideation to help (1) increase the identification of students at risk for suicide or with mental and behavioral problems that may increase the risk of suicide, (2) appropriately respond to students at risk, (3) promote help seeking behaviors and recommend appropriate referral sources, and ultimately (4) prevent death by suicide as well as suicide attempts by ULM students.

The program will: (1) Educate and empower faculty, staff and police officers.Professional development seminars and courses will be developed along with paper and electronic awareness campaigns. (2) Enhance already existing services and training programs aimed at educating incoming freshmen and their families. Educational workshops will be developed along with culturally appropriate paper and electronic awareness campaigns. (3) Enhance already existing services and training programs aimed at educating the ULM student body at large.Culturally appropriate electronic and paper educational tools and awareness campaigns will be developed.

University of Kentucky Increasing Networks for Campus Awareness of Suicide and Emergencies (UK-IN-CASE) seeks systematically to create a safer and more caring campus community, to assist those at risk for suicidal behavior, and to support those who are concerned about the welfare of members of the community. This project will be accomplished by using a public health model, which expands on current campus practices to create a systemic program of suicide prevention and postvention that integrates service, policy, and referral networks.
UK-IN-CASE will more closely tie efforts between Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, and the university’s Medical Campus. UK-IN-CASE will expand current prevention and gatekeeper training efforts, increase awareness and availability of mental health services to students, and better link the various means by which students access support and mental health resources at the University of Kentucky (UK). The goal is to reduce both direct and indirect population risk while also sealing the cracks in high-risk or critical cases by improving appropriate referral, treatment, and followup. Suicide prevention efforts at UK, which have been led to date by the Counseling and Testing Center, have garnered substantial interest and commitment from both university leaders and front-line departments in developing solid partnerships and a more systemic structure for managing critical student incidents, mental health emergencies, and suicide.

Major aspects of the program include the following:

1. Campus network and policy development in which a campus advisory group will be formed with representation from over 15 campus departments, offices, and academic units and eight community consultants, with the goal of creating a comprehensive, regularly assessed and evidence-based campus suicide prevention plan
2. Health communications and stigma reduction that aims to utilize social marketing and educational programs to educate students, their families, and community members, and decrease stigma and encourage help seeking
3. Gatekeeper and clinical training that seeks to expand gatekeeper training so that it is systematic in targeting specific populations of students, faculty, and staff, and to ensure that campus professionals and students in professional programs receive appropriate clinical training.

Evaluation and data collection efforts will aid in providing evidence of whether grant activities are furthering best practices.

The project currently enjoys the support of multiple campus partners and university administration at the highest levels, as well as community partners who are committed to creating a systemic suicide prevention program at UK. The goal is to help our community “in case” of emergencies such as suicide, the type of event which no one on campus ever wants to happen. With increasing campus networks, campus policy, communications and clinical services create a caring campus community that will likely have ripple effects on regional mental health and suicide prevention.

The overarching purpose of this project, Campus Suicide Prevention at the University of Kansas(KU), is to prevent suicides on the KU campus through increased collaboration and coordination among campus and community partners and increased prevention activities. Project goals include: To increase infrastructure for suicide prevention efforts; to increase suicide prevention competency of faculty, students and staff; and to increase the awareness of resources at KU and in the surrounding community. Although KU and the surrounding community of Lawrence has many mental health and support services available to students in crisis, presently, there is no formalization of the process by which these entities work together to address suicide prevention. Further, KU does not have a comprehensive suicide prevention and postvention plan in place. By bringing together various campus and community entities (e.g., Counseling and Psychological Services, the Center for Public Partnerships and Research, the Undergraduate Advising Center, the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Student Involvement and Leadership Center, and the KU Card Center on the KU campus, as well as Headquarters, Inc., the Willow Domestic Violence Center and GaDuGi SafeCenter from the Lawrence community), this project aims to formalize relationships, coordinate services, increase awareness and overall, strengthen and widen the safety net available to KU students who are in crisis. Through our first project goal, to increase infrastructure for suicide prevention on the KU campus, we will collaborate to form an Advisory Council, comprised of individuals representing the partners listed above, that will utilize process data to inform decisions involving data-driven university infrastructure development. This Advisory Council will perform a university-wide needs assessment to collect information on the current level of awareness, attitudes and readiness to address suicide prevention and to focus initiatives on the KU campus, and subsequently review, improve and disseminate prevention and postvention policies. Through our second goal, to increase the suicide prevention competency and awareness of resources of staff and faculty through evidence-based training, we will provide gatekeeper QPR training to both faculty members and academic advisors to help them recognize and appropriately respond to students in distress. To achieve our third goal, to increase the suicide awareness and prevention competency of students, we will provide gatekeeper training to student leaders representing campus groups, as well as provide targeted training to student groups representing at-risk populations (e.g., LGBTQ, student veterans). Lastly, to achieve our fourth goal,to increase awareness of suicide prevention resources both on campus and in the community, we will promote the NSPL by printing the number on the back of the KU ID card Tyvek sleeves and advertising community services in KU buses and student planners. We anticipate that through these combined efforts, this project has the potential to impact all 24,612 students on the KU Lawrence campus annually, as well as all faculty and staff.

Leveraging Campus- Community Collaborations to Enhance Suicide Prevention at the University of Iowa (LCCC) is a new initiative by The University of Iowa (UI) Counseling Services and its partners that directly addresses the critical need to develop appropriate suicide prevention programs for college students. This 3-year infrastructure development project will strengthen UI’s organizational structures to support suicide prevention and mental health promotion through the development of a comprehensive approach.

LCCC will 1) expand networks on and off campus, 2) increase communication between UI units and community partners and, 3) develop new materials and trainings focused on high risk groups and their families. This project will directly serve UI’s 30,000 students, 2,000 faculty and 12,000 staff with special efforts to reach students identified by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention as at-risk; lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) youth, American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/AN), racial and ethnic minority students, and military family members and veterans.

The project has six objectives:

1. Increase culturally competent suicide prevention and mental health promotion training to students, faculty and staff;
2. Strengthen collaboration among campus and community partners to encourage the message that suicide prevention is everyones business;
3. Increase the number of educational materials provided to students, faculty, staff and family members on suicide prevention, including culturally appropriate materials for specific targeted populations and at-risk populations identified by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention;
4. Increase help-seeking behavior among students needing care for mental and behavioral health issues;
5. Provide educational activities to reduce stigma for seeking care for mental and behavioral health issues among students;
6. Increase the visibility of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the local 24-hour crisis line and crisis chat services.

Project objectives will be completed over a 3-year period. The design and implementation of LCCC fully supports the prevention of mental illness and preventing suicides and attempted suicides among populations at high risk. This project uses the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention from National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, and supports its goals to provide an operating structure to catalyze planning, implementation and accountability for updating and advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.

The purpose of the University of Idaho Suicide Prevention Program is to develop comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable suicide prevention efforts on the UI campus to reduce student suicidal behavior including attempts and death by suicide. The goals of the program are to collaborate with on- and off-campus partners to train university gatekeepers utilizing the QPR training program, to present educational seminars and disseminate informational material on suicide and mental health issues to students and families, to increase awareness of and utilization of after hour crisis services and promote the services of the national crisis hotline, to develop and implement a campus wide campaign to increase help seeking behavior and utilization for mental and behavioral health problems and to coordinate with local hospitals and other mental health agencies to provide continuum of care for suicidal and mentally ill students. The targeted population for the program is all members of the University community on the Moscow, Idaho campus with intentional focus on underserved groups such as LGBTQA students, veterans, incoming-students, and Native American/Alaskan Native students, students with disabilities and students from other ethnic minority groups. Eight objectives were identified to accomplish the goals and create a safer community: (1) To conduct suicide prevention training to at least 60% of UI faculty and staff by the end of the three-year grant period. (2) To advertise and promote utilization of the afterhours crisis service provided by the Counseling & Testing Center and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. (3) To develop and present, by peer educators, 1educational seminar per year to every first-year residence hall and all Greek houses. (4) To develop and present, by peer educators, one educational seminar per semester to each targeted group including but not limited to LGBTQA, American Indian/Native Alaskan, military family members, veterans, students with disabilities and ethnic minority students. (5) To develop and distribute informational material to 100% of the academic departments and Student Affairs offices for display. Informational material will also be displayed in areas commonly frequented by students such as the Idaho Commons, Residence Life Cafeteria, Student Recreation Center, Student Union Building and Kibbie Dome. (6) To conduct evidenced based screening on alcohol use and mood disorders to the general student population. (7) To educate the university community and families of students on the availability and benefits of counseling as well as the risk and protective factors associated with suicide. (8) To educate the university community and families of students on the availability and benefits of counseling as well as the risk and protective factors associated with suicide.

The University of Houston-Victoria (UHV) Counseling Center will undertake the project, Jags for Life, named after UHV mascot, the Jaguar. The project seeks to establish and sustain targeted suicide prevention and treatment services to all of UHV 4,491 students and any newly enrolling students through education, training, resource distribution, and service provider partnerships. The project goals are (1) to train faculty, staff, and students to respond to student crises effectively; (2) to raise faculty, staff, and student awareness of suicide risk factors through educational materials; and (3) to create a supportive campus and community environment through strong collaborative partnerships. The project has outlined the following objectives:

1. One (1) Health Educator/Case Manager will be in place to provide education and training programs within the first year.
2. Four (4) training sessions will be held on campus each academic year for students, faculty and staff on suicide prevention, substance use and mental health promotion starting Year 2 of the project.
3. Educational programs will be presented six (6) times each academic year for students, faculty and staff regarding suicide prevention and reduction of risk factors, such as depression and substance abuse.
4. There will be an expanded, comprehensive crisis response plan in place by the end of the first year.
5. There will be traditional print informational materials available in the Counseling Center, in academic buildings, and at the residence halls by the end of Year 1. By the end of Year 2, informational materials will be available in electronic and social media.
6. There will be nine (9) monthly meetings annually of the Suicide Prevention Advisory Team.
7. There will be a 10% increase in the number of students utilizing university mental health services by the end of Year 2 of the project.

Since 1973, the University of Houston-Victoria served as an upper-level commuter institution. In the fall of 2010, UHV completed downward expansion by welcoming freshmen to campus. Because it is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, UHV freshmen and sophomores are largely minority, low-income, and first-generation college students. UHV enrollment numbers are increasing as is the Counseling Centers request for services. By completing the transition to a traditional four year institution, UHV is prepared to safeguard the student body by implementing a program to reduce suicide, substance use, and mental health concerns on campus.