U. pushes to raise more awareness of suicide prevention
The topic of suicide prevention is at the forefront of discussion among the University's administration following the recent suicide of University first-year student Tyler Clementi.
Patrick Love, associate vice president for Student Affairs, said he is trying to provide the student community with resources to raise awareness about suicide prevention, teaming up with Francesca Maresca, the senior health education specialist for Health Outreach, Promotion and Education.
"We are both trying to address the needs of our [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community in the aftermath, as well as continuing our work on trying to raise awareness of the issue of suicide on campus," he said.
As co-chair of Community-based Approaches to Suicide Prevention, Love said one of his main focuses is to engage the community in identifying what they can contribute to suicide prevention, noting there are many reasons why young people choose to take their own life.
"We know that among young people and college students who commit suicide, a significant proportion of them have never seen a counselor. But for most of them, someone in their life knew something was wrong," he said. "What we're trying to do is get that someone to communicate to a person who can help so that the person at risk can be pulled into the network of resources that are available."
Love and Maresca sent out a University-wide e-mail, highlighting students with outlets at the University to seek help for suicide prevention.
"We listed seven different community resources for assistance," he said. "Among the community resources are [Counseling, Alcohol and Other Drug Assistance Program and Psychiatric Services], the Deans of Students office, the Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance, the Center for Social Justice and Education and LGBT Communities, and RUPD."
Michal Saraf, a psychological counselor for CAPS, said the organization responded to concerns individuals had about Clementi's suicide and are a presence on campus to help with its aftermath.
"We certainly apprise people of our ongoing availability in the event that they are concerned about themselves or concerned about any other student," she said. "So we certainly had many discussions to educate people about suicide prevention and response to suicide in this particular situation."
The role of CAPS is to provide a full range of services to the University student community, providing an outlet to help with suicide prevention, Saraf said.
"We do assessments for anyone who calls and then, based on the assessment, we offer different treatment options which include individual and group therapy, as well as psychopharmacological intervention," she said.
The Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT communities is also an outlet for students to find counseling.
Jenny Kurtz, acting director for the center, said they have a liaison program providing students with a faculty member who is trained to work with the LGBT community.
"We make sure that our students know about the resources available through HOPE and also CAPS for additional support," she said. "We also talk with students on how to help refer your friends to counseling services as well."
There are also representatives from the center who worked closely with the Community Approach to Suicide Prevention in Higher Education, which was coordinated by Love and focused on highlighting the ways communities can help with suicide prevention.
"This is important because statistically there is higher representation of LGBT folks than non-LGBT students," she said. "This is a national statistic so it's something that we are aware and are trying to be intentional about."
Love said Community-based Approaches to Suicide Prevention worked hard over the summer and into the fall to put together five outreach groups for the student community to use.
"The focuses of the five work groups are academics, Residence Life, commuters, special populations, including students of color, LGBT students and then affiliated groups. [Also], other units on campus that might end up dealing with students, like RUPD, EMS, and Health Services."
Love also said his organization assigned representatives for work groups to help students who need assistance with suicide prevention.
"We were also beginning to focus on what we wanted to accomplish in raising awareness [and] making people in the community aware of how to get help for people they might think to be at risk for hurting themselves," he said.
Love said the death of Clementi did slow the development of Community-based Approaches to Suicide Prevention, but it has not hindered the goals and poise of the group.
"Has it lessened our resolve? Absolutely not," he said. "Has it strengthened our resolve? It's hard for us to imagine we could be anymore resolved to try address the issue."
Suicide prevention is a top priority for the University, with Love saying the first job Vice President for Student Affairs Gregory S. Blimling gave him was to formulate a conference for suicide prevention outreach.
"We ended up putting together a team and actually developing and putting on, in less than five months, a statewide conference with 250 people from around the state focused on community approaches to suicide prevention," he said.
Love said following the student suicide in Demarest Hall on the College Avenue campus last semester, Blimling wanted more focus on suicide prevention throughout the University. With Clementi's suicide, this put more emphasis on the topic, he said.
"It made it clearer to people the kind of issues we are facing as a community. There are many reasons why a young person might choose to take their life," he said. "Obviously, we have now a nationally known example of what appears to be some of the reasons why somebody may want to do that."
