Miami University of Ohio

The Miami University Suicide Prevention and Awareness Program creates a suicide safety net for all five Miami campuses in Ohio and Luxembourg. This safety net will grow by training faculty, staff and students on the warning signs of suicide, developing an all-University crisis response plan using campus and community resources, and providing educational programs to increase awareness, increase help-seeking, and improve student emotional health.

Miami’s population includes selective enrollment, primarily upper middle class residential students and open enrollment, lower middle class commuter students. Clinically, the suicide rate is about average for a college campus, but the binge drinking rate is very high.

The goal of this program is to establish a comprehensive suicide prevention safety net that covers all five Miami campuses. The four objectives are:

1. Develop and provide gatekeeper training in suicide prevention for all members of the Miami University community;
2. Using the Jed Foundation model, create a plan for crisis response that spans all campuses and increases collaborations with community mental health resources
3. Develop and present seminars in resiliency to students/faculty/staff on four Ohio campuses to prevent suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental distress, and
4. Provide suicide prevention information to increase help-seeking among students.

The strategies to accomplish this include providing web-based Kognito At-Risk training, developing an in-person training geared for students to supplement Miami’s in-person trainings for faculty and for staff, develop and deliver a program in resiliency for faculty, staff and students, create a Miami webpage dedicated to suicide prevention, and dispel stigma with a nationally-recognized speaker. The overall target for faculty and staff participation is 40% (or approximately 650 faculty and staff); and the overall target for student participation is all entering freshman for three years (10,800 students), and 60% of the remaining students (approximately 10,700 students over three years) for a total impact of 22,150 Miami University community members.