SUICIDE PREVENTION PROGRAM

Our Mission: The Ohio State University Suicide Prevention Program (OSUSPP) works to engage a campus community of nearly 100,000 students, staff and faculty through education, outreach and advocacy. We are committed to creating a systematic, inclusive, diverse, and coordinated effort where suicide prevention is seen as a shared campus responsibility.

We believe:

• Suicide is preventable.
• Anyone can learn how to help someone who is at risk for suicide.
• Suicide prevention is a shared campus responsibility.
• Reducing stigma is an essential component to lowering suicide risk and promoting a campus culture that encourages mental health help-seeking.
• Suicide prevention and mental health are critical components of student academic and overall success.
• Suicide prevention involves focused and strategic education, advocacy, and outreach.
• Suicide prevention efforts must be clearly and intentionally grounded in culturally appropriate messaging and programming that celebrates and enriches the diversity of the campus community.
• Active, engaged, and diverse campus partners and a high level of student leadership and involvement are essential to program success.
• Suicide prevention programming should use and contribute to a comprehensive model grounded in empirical research and evidence-based best practices for public health promotion.

Effective suicide prevention is comprehensive: it requires a combination of efforts that work together to address different aspects of the problem. In 2018, OSUSPP developed the “Pillars of a Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program” which serves as a model for our work. We believe these pillars and strategies form a broad campus approach to suicide prevention and mental health promotion. They include: advocacy, infrastructure, screening, partnership, leadership, education, policy, student leadership, and opportunities for collaboration.