"Suicide Prevention Can Do Work Beyond Preventing Suicide": Evaluating a Campus-Wide Suicide Prevention Program

Background:

Young adults aged 18-29 in the US continue to face an escalated risk of suicide ideation (Curtin & Garnett, 2023). In an effort to respond to these risks, the student health and counseling center developed a virtual suicide prevention training program. The suicide prevention program focuses on increasing student and school-based staff’s knowledge and skills in recognizing risk factors, warning signs of suicidal thoughts, offering support to peers experiencing mental health crises, as well as introducing resources available on and off campus for suicide prevention. In this first year of the program, a series of Listening Sessions was offered, to seek feedback from students about the program, to incorporate their voices and perspectives on what suicide prevention means to them, and to better understand how to engage various students’ communities in discussions surrounding suicide prevention. This preliminary evaluative report discusses the findings from these suicide prevention Listening Sessions, as well as identifying recommendations for suicide prevention efforts more broadly.

Methods:

The Listening Sessions were developed and facilitated by an interdisciplinary research team within the school of social work and the student health and counseling center. Student participants (n = 19) identified with diverse racial, ethnic, and sexual orientations, and included both undergraduate students and graduate students alike. The Listening Sessions took place both in person and virtually. Each listening session was 1-3 hours long and was a combination of facilitated discussions and guided engagement in the training modules. The discussions centered on feedback on the modules, needs or gaps in the training and resources provided, and intersections between substance use and suicide. There was also an emphasis on culturally and community-specific feedback about barriers to seeking and receiving services and what recommendations they had for better engaging with communities about this work. Each participant was asked to complete a consent form as well as a demographic survey in addition to the pre/post-test survey that accompanies the suicide prevention modules. Participants were given snacks, drinks, and fidget toys, and $10 incentive gift cards for participation.

Results and Implications:

Preliminary findings from the students’ participation emphasized the importance of a social justice lens in suicide prevention initiatives, providing macro-level contexts and societal influences on suicide risk. These contextual factors should focus on diversity, historical trauma, racism, and other forms of oppression as the connect to risk factors, and warning signs among young adults. Secondly, understanding factors affecting suicide ideation among different student communities/groups such as international students, autistic students, veteran students, or student athletes has proven helpful for both students in and out of such communities in helping themselves and offering support to peers. Thirdly, campus-wide suicide prevention needs to emphasize and understand the intersectionality among the community members. There is a need for more integrated services, resources, and responses to attend to the needs of students from multiple targeted identity backgrounds. Importantly, the findings indicate that suicide prevention efforts can impact more than just suicide risk among college students by creating opportunities for discussion, connection, mutual aid and collective support.