Grantee Types: Garrett Lee Smith Campus

The Friends Helping Friends program is designed to create a network of informed peers who are equipped to act as referral sources for students in need. Many factors – stress, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, transition issues, loneliness – that put students at risk for suicide or attempted suicide (Kadison & DiGeronimo, 2004) can be treated before the situation reaches the stage of suicide if students can be connected with available mental health services (Kadison, 2004). Unfortunately, 80-90% of college students who die by suicide do not seek help from their college counseling centers (Kisch, Leino, & Silverman, 2005) and only a minority of those at potential risk seek counseling services (Furr, Westefeld, McConnell, & Jenkins, 2001; Kisch et al., 2005). A recent study (Eisenberg, Golberstein, & Gollust, 2007), for example, found that among college students who screened positive for depression or anxiety between 37% and 84% (depending on the disorder) did not seek services.Given the amount of time that students spend with friends, classmates, and fellow student organization members, peers represent an important and overlooked ally in campus prevention programs related to suicide and other mental and behavioral health issues. These students can act as reliable sources of mental and behavioral health information and help to humanize the help seeking process.

The Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Campus Suicide Prevention Grant will fund five programmatic activities with the over-arching goal of identifying students who are at risk for suicide, and helping them obtain appropriate mental and behavioral health services. The diverse grant activities involve the entire campus community and incorporate a wide range of services and providers. The Gatekeeper Liaison Training Program will develop a formal infrastructure of faculty and staff to liaison with Counseling and Wellness Services (CWS) professionals in a community effort to decrease suicidal behavior. A “train-the-trainer” model will be utilized to extend the responsibility for students’ psychological and physical well being on campus to non-mental health professionals who work with students in their natural environments. The S.U.P.E.R Peer Education Program will develop a cadre of students to provide educational presentations to other students oriented towards “helping a friend”. The Web-based Information Program will expand existing web-based information on suicide prevention as part of a multimodal, multicultural approach to reach students, parents, faculty and staff with information on college student mental health issues, and resources for help. The E-Mail Mental and Behavioral Health Screening Program will target those students who may be reluctant to seek traditional psychological services, but may respond to offers of anonymous assessment and service on the internet. All undergraduate students will be contacted yearly, and offered the opportunity to complete an on-line screening instrument and have either in person, or on-line follow up with a therapist. The Parent Alliance Program will enhance CWS’ relationship with parents of UNC-CH students – through presentations, newsletters, and web based information targeted to parent groups – to better utilize their extensive and unique knowledge of their children’s mental and behavioral health vulnerabilities, and involve them as a first line of contact for their distressed children.

The University of New Mexico (UNM) proposes a Comprehensive, Coordinated, University-wide Suicide Prevention Project (CCUSPP) with the goal of reducing the number of attempted and completed suicides among the student population, with emphasis on those that are at greater risk including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LBGTQ) youth. CCUSPP will be led by the Office for Equity and Inclusion’s LGBTQ Resource Center in partnership with other UNM Departments such as Student Health and Counseling, Agora Crisis Center and the Center for Rural and Community Behavioral Health. External partners include the NM Suicide Prevention Coalition and the NM Department of Health. The project will feature two main components: (1) Development of a coordinated, comprehensive prevention and response plan; and (2) Extensive gatekeeper training and dissemination of information. Stakeholder groups to be targeted for training include students, faculty and staff, campus health and mental health professionals, family members, and others that have contact and influence with the target populations including law enforcement, residence hall advisors, student government, and student organization leaders. CCUSPP will focus on the main campus in Albuquerque as well as branch campuses in Gallup, Taos and Valencia. The project is guided by six objectives:

• Objective 1: Prevention and Response Plan. By the end of the grant period, the project will improve collaboration among internal and external departments and agencies to develop and implement a coordinated prevention and response plan including a referral network.
• Objective 2: Gatekeeper Training. Each year, the project will increase the number of individuals on campus trained in suicide prevention including (a) faculty and staff; (b) Resident Assistants; (c) Student Health and Counseling Staff; (d) Community Primary Care Providers; (e) Community Behavioral Health Providers; (f) Campus Police Officers; (g) Other University Stakeholders (e.g. library staff, CAPS tutoring, residence life, student services, resource centers); and (h) university students for peer support.
• Objective 3: Improved Knowledge and Confidence. Each year, at least 80% of gatekeeper training participants will improve their level of knowledge and confidence about suicide prevention.
• Objective 4. Training of Trainers. Each year, at least 10 UNM staff will be trained to provide gatekeeper training to university stakeholders.
• Objective 5. Dissemination of Information. Each grant year the project will add to the number of individuals exposed to mental health awareness messages including students, faculty, and health and mental health providers.
• Objective 6. Help-Seeking Behavior. Each year, university students will exhibit increased help-seeking behavior evidenced by accessing mental health resources on campus, accessing local Agora crisis line, and accessing national Lifeline.

UNH is dedicated to offering high quality health services and programs for the safety and development of our students. Therefore, we have expanded the network of services to students through growing the Campus Suicide Prevention Committee (CSPC) both regarding composition (i.e., more students have joined) and structure (i.e., we have added 3 Working Groups focused on undergraduate student particular populations, Residential Life students, as well as faculty, staff and graduate students). We also aim to continue enhancing in-person and online suicide prevention trainings, as well as offering more tailored and sustainable programs and educational materials to the campus focused on students particularly at high school.

To specify objectives, we are in the process of consulting the Jed & Clinton Foundation Health Matters Campus Program and The Healthy Minds survey regarding campus safety and wellness assessments. As well, we will partner with campus Health Services and the UNH police to improve means restriction. We continue to expand the safety net through offering best practices trainings (i.e., we have expanded Kognito programs and in-person Mental Health First Aid) for college students, faculty and staff, LGBTQ+ populations, and student veterans/military connected students; we aim also to expand the safety net through further promoting the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and existing emergency mental health services for at-risk students (i.e., student groups who may be marginalized generally and/or underrepresented regarding service utilization), i.e. students of color, student veterans, graduate students,  first generation college students, international students, as well as LGBTQ+ identified students.

We will continue collaborating with the UNH Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, the Office of International Students, campus Office of Military and Veterans Services, and the Navitas program to develop culturally competent educational materials and programs. We will develop tailored materials for the family members of students by partnering with the Parents Association and UNH Cooperative Extension. We realize this infrastructure is multi-layered, and we will coordinate UNH Durham’s suicide prevention efforts with those occurring at UNH Manchester and School of Law though the focus will be on the UNH Durham campus. We plan to continue infuse our efforts into UNH’s current social norms campaign, YOU CAN HELP™ consistent with our view that suicide prevention is a community concern.

Moreover, Key Personnel and the Adjunct Assistant Dean of Students have worked with undergraduate and graduate students to create a new official student organization called Stop the Stigma (STS): Let’s Talk. The mission of STS is to reduce stigma and increase dialogue regarding mental health concerns, including suicide. STS intends to provide educational materials and programming to campus through collaboration with the Director and Assistant Director of the grant.

Our aim is to train a total of 2,000 students each year of the grant on the three peer Kognito programs as well as 500 faculty and staff each year on the three faculty/staff programs, for a total of 7,500 campus members. In addition, we aspire to train up to 2,000 campus members, and up to 10 additional trainers will be trained in Mental Health First Aid. At least 40 family members will take the Families of Heroes Kognito program. We anticipate an increase in referrals to and consultations with the Counseling Center and the Behavioral Intervention Team, particularly from the aforementioned at-risk student groups. This data will be collected in the aggregate.

At this time, the Project Director will be responsible for overseeing the grant activities as well as continual analysis of program data and performance through consultation with the grant Assistant Director and the CSPC.

The University of Nebraska Kearney, founded in 1905, is Nebraska’s public, residential university that is distinguished by its commitment to be the state’s premier institution of undergraduate education. UNK is home to 6,382 undergraduate students from 37 states and 50 countries. UNK’s Counseling & Health Care Department supports the academic mission of the University of Nebraska Kearney by providing professional mental and physical health prevention and intervention services, thereby enhancing students’ intellectual proficiency. This however is a difficult task when students view “free services” as “less service” and opt not to utilize Counseling & Health Care. Since the Fall of 2004, UNK’s Counseling Care has seen a total of 220 students due to a “depressed mood,” making up thirty-six percent of all students seen by counselors during that time frame. Of these students, fifty-three percent are clients with suicide ideation and twelve percent have been hospitalized for attempting suicide, with one student committing suicide in the Spring of 2005. Several notable assessments; including the AmericanCollege Health Association-National College Health Assessment, provides data showing that a high percentage of UNK students have or do experience some form of mental health illness. However, many of these students do not seek help due to the stigma associated with mental health illness. Surveys also show that many students arrive on campus already suffering from depression, anxiety and other mental health illnesses. Therefore the target population for this project is first and second year students along with the international student population living on campus. The goals of the UNK Comprehensive Suicide Prevention program are to: (1) increase the number of students seen for mental health issues by 10 percent through physically connecting UNK’s Counseling and Health Care offices; (2) enhance UNK’s current crisis response plan through training opportunities for the UNK community and those who are actively involved with executing the plan; (3) enhance student services by creating a networking infrastructure to link UNK with at least two providers from the broader community who can treat mental and behavioral health problems; (4) recruit and train nineteen peer counselors to respond effectively when dealing with mental and behavioral health issues; (5) to create a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) campus organization in order to diminish the stigma and barriers associated with help-seeking behaviors for mental and behavioral health issues by 10 percent within the first year of the organizations existence. To meet these objectives, we propose to conduct gatekeeper training; develop and implement education seminars; provide wellness training to undergraduate peer counselors, disseminate information to parents, and create linkages to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

The Wellness Resource Center at the University of Missouri (MU) will implement a comprehensive suicide prevention effort that increases individual students resiliency and increases the capacity of the campus community to take action to promote students emotional health and reduce the likelihood of suicide with special emphasis on high risk populations including lesbian, gay and bisexual students and military family members and veterans. As programming is solidified at MU, the Partners in Prevention (PIP) coalition, a consortium of 20 college campuses across Missouri, will collaborate with MU to further expand this programming onto college campuses across the state, integrating lessons learned from experiences in implementation and administration at MU. The proposed project mirrors the objectives of the Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention grant by increasing the amount of training to students, faculty, and staff through the Ask Listen Refer and QPR training programs, increasing collaboration through the Suicide Prevention Task Force and the PIP Suicide Prevention Planning Group, increasing the number of educational seminars and informational materials through new poster campaigns and the statewide ?Call to Action?, and increasing help-seeking among students and promoting the Suicide Prevention Lifeline through Wellness Coaching initiatives and on-line training. The statewide efforts will include the implementation of a statewide Call to Action for campus senior administrators. This Call to Action will include the publication of a statewide blueprint for campuses to use to guide the adoption of evidence-based approaches previously piloted at MU. All efforts of the proposed project will be evaluated using a multi-modal approach, including qualitative and quantitative measures.c

The University of Michigan, as the flagship public university in the state of Michigan, educates over 43,000 students a year and is the largest employer in the state of Michigan. Despite strong institutional commitment to mental health services, 24% of UM students report thinking about suicide, while 11.3% seriously considered attempting suicide at least once in the last academic year. In addition, 1.1% of students said they had attempted suicide at least once. UM’s Campus Suicide Prevention Grant will build upon a strong foundation of universal approaches to mental health education, student support, and stigma reduction at UM to make suicide prevention a core university-wide priority. The goals of our 3-year Campus Suicide Prevention Grant will be to:

1. Capitalize on existing collaborations at the University of Michigan to increase capacity for suicide prevention. In Year 1, our Suicide Prevention Task Force will complete required activities such as a) updating the university’s mental health needs assessment (last updated in 2005) b) assessing provider capacity/training both on and off campus, and c) developing and disseminating a long-term, comprehensive suicide prevention and crisis management plan aligned with the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.
2. Build upon our foundation of universal prevention by initiating indicated prevention strategies for 3 high-risk groups at U of M: returning veterans and their families, LGBTQ youth, and “disconnected” students (defined as first generation students and/or those on academic probation).
3. Partner with Michigan’s State GLS grant to provide training opportunities to university clinical staff as well as local community providers in evidence-based suicide risk assessment and care management (AMSR) as well as intensive gatekeeper training (ASIST). These training opportunities will expand U of M’s existing QPR gatekeeper training program and will prioritize a) graduate student instructors, b) pre-service training for students studying to enter helping professions as well as c) tailored trainings to support the needs of our identified high risk populations.
4. With the support of our Suicide Prevention Task Force, we will identify “suicide prevention champions” across departments and organizations at the university who will actively support suicide prevention as a core priority and who will ensure sustainability of suicide prevention activities post grant award.

UM’s Campus Suicide prevention grant will benefit the entire community (43,000 students and over 21,000 employees), especially the 310 matriculated veterans, approximately 3000 first generation students, and approximately 1,300 students identifying as LGBTQ (based on a rate of 3% identifying as LGBTQ). We will provide intensive best practices trainings (to include ASIST, AMSR, and trainings in cultural competence) for a minimum of 30 members of the clinical work force and 30 gatekeepers per year for 3 years.

UM Unites to Prevent College Suicide by Transforming Campus CultureThe purpose of UM Unites is to transform the culture on UM’s diverse campus through leadership, social action and community engagement into a caring and help-seeking environment by increasing awareness and reducing stigma through leadership, social action and community engagement.

The proposed project builds on the University of Miami’s strengths and existing campus suicide prevention activities: including Lifeguards, Canes Care for Canes, Counseling Center, Residential Life, Campus Police, Student Affairs Crisis coordinator and Student Assessment Committee.Universal and selective prevention efforts will be designed with input from key stakeholders, including members of various at-risk groups and implemented through community engagement. All undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Miami with be targeted, which includes over 15,000 students of diverse backgrounds in terms of age, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and country of origin. In addition, selective prevention activities will target various at-risk groups based upon the literature, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and the demographics of the student body at the University of Miami. These groups include those whose demographics place them at risk, such as males, including undergraduate seniors and graduate students, and other at risk groups such as people with disabilities and military family members and veterans.

Although UM has a number of existing suicide prevention efforts on campus, there are gaps: only three trained gatekeepers on campus; no formal suicide screening mechanism; no targeting Suicide Case Management Team; no formal Suicide Response and Prevention Plan; no formal Suicide Tracking and Event Surveillance System. To address these gaps, UM Unites, a universal and selective suicide preventative effort, will collaboratively designed and implemented through community engagement. All prevention strategies used will be culturally competent and evidence-based or designated best practices. The specific goals and objectives are to (1) implement gatekeeper programs to train students, staff, faculty, administrators and members of at-risk groups; (2) strengthen the infrastructure through implementing comprehensive screening linked to an intervention for all undergraduate and graduate students and creating a suicide response protocol and formal suicide tracking system; (3) expand educational seminars for undergraduate and graduate students; (4) promote the nation suicide hotline; (5) develop and disseminate culturally sensitive informational materials for students using multiple media and (6) develop and disseminate suicide prevention educational materials for families. A well-designed assessment will ascertain if the preventative efforts are associated with increased service utilization among individuals with suicidal behavior, particularly at-risk groups; overall reductions in suicide ideation/attempts; greater knowledge among community members regarding suicide and its prevention; reductions in stigma in stigma associated with suicide and service use; and cultural transformation.

The University of Memphis is an urban university in the mid-south with an enrollment of more than 21,000 students. Approximately 50 percent of the students are considered high-risk for behavior and mental health problems, including those associated with suicide and suicidal behavior. In response to an institutional assessment of campus resources and needs related to behavioral and mental health issues associated with suicide, the University of Memphis will implement Memphis STEPS2(Suicide Training, Education, and Prevention Services), a comprehensive and coordinated campus suicide prevention initiative.

The program centers around: (1) educating students, faculty, staff and the broader university community (i.e., parents, families) about suicide, mental and behavioral health problems (e.g., depression and substance abuse) associated with suicide as well as prevention and intervention resources and services available within the university community to address these problems; (2) developing and implementing training in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of individuals suffering with behavioral/mental health problems (e.g., suicidal ideation, depression) for various segments of the university community, including students enrolled in helping professions, such as nursing, clinical and counseling psychology; (3) evaluating the efficacy of the various educational and training activities, programs and services that will be offered as part of this initiative, in promoting mental health and preventing suicide on campus; and (4) developing an organizational structure that includes coordinated programs and services to sustain the initiative.

UMass Lowell Counseling Center and the Division of Student Affairs, in collaboration with NAMI NH Connect Suicide Prevention Project, propose the implementation of a campus-wide suicide prevention, intervention and postvention project, spanning a three-year period. The proposed project will include the following activities:

1. Provide training to University staff, faculty, students and their families on campus and in the surrounding community to assist them in identifying students at risk for suicide, and referring them to appropriate resources;
2. Deliver educational seminars to a cross-section of the campus community, to increase awareness of suicide risk factors;
3. Work with campus and outside agencies to design and implement systematic risk assessment and referral protocols, resulting in a comprehensive system of suicide risk and response;
4. Provide suicide postvention training for community sectors of law enforcement and first responder, University administration, residence life; and
5. Prioritize the needs of high-risk populations on campus, including military veterans and students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT)

Connect Prevention Training will empower gatekeepers to identify and refer high-risk students to appropriate resources. A Train the Trainer model will recruit key individuals campus-wide to build training capacity and long-term sustainability. Educational Seminars to support SAMHSAs first Strategic Initiative will be provided by community partners to address suicide risk factors, including substance abuse, depression and social isolation and to alert campus members to the early detection and intervention of mental health and substance abuse issues.

Materials with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and warning signs, and the local Samaritans information, will be distributed at all trainings and seminars. Campus-Specific Protocols, readily adapted from existing Connect templates, will be created in collaboration with campus and outside resource partners to create a community-wide safety net. Connect Postvention Training will establish guidelines for promoting healing and reducing risk in the wake of a suicide. Attention will be given to the needs of the 500 registered students who are military veterans on this campus, and of the less visible LGBT community. Evaluation of the process and outcomes of all these program activities, and the use of the data in an ongoing feedback loop, will inform interactions across the campus and within the Lowell community.