Wisconsin – Mental Health America of Wisconsin

Wisconsin will utilize a mentoring and expert consultation approach to develop culturally sensitive, cross systems and consumer inclusive projects in 9 communities with elevated risk of youth suicide and then disseminate information on best practices through regional sharing sessions, a toolkit, and a list serve. This process will create an infrastructure and increased capacity to support the development of further projects. Wisconsin will educate all project sites on identifying at-risk groups in their communities but will focus particular attention on the following three target populations with elevated risk for suicide: Native American youth, youth who are deaf/hard of hearing, and youth in rural areas. Project sites will be required to include the major youth-serving systems as part of their local coalitions, as well as including parents, mental health consumers, public health and primary care, faith communities and other stakeholders. Involvement of survivors of suicide will be strongly encouraged.

Wisconsin will also support suicide prevention in other areas of the state through the following: providing consultation and training to other sites as requested; developing and disseminating best practice postvention guidelines for schools and communities; developing and disseminating a suicide prevention bulletin for school administrators to provide education about the role of schools in preventing suicide; and participating in planning for the annual Crisis Intervention Conference in order to utilize this highly attended event to disseminate information.

We will hold a summit of stakeholders from across the state in grant year three to identify how we can build on what we have learned to promote a sustainable infrastructure for future suicide prevention efforts.