The New School's (TNS) Campus Suicide Prevention Project is a suicide prevention and mental health awareness initiative that brings together the university's Provost's Office, Counseling Services, Wellness/Health Education, Student Advocacy, the Department of Psychology, and four community partners to increase the university's capacity to prevent student suicide and promote mental health within the student population through training, services, and awareness events. TNS is a large, urban private university with an AY2020-2022 student enrollment of 10,247, in which the vast majority (72%) was undergraduates. The student population is diverse with 36.6% identifying as LGBTQIA+, 32% international students, and 30% Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC).
Based on Spring 2019 NCHA data, over 75% of TNS students experience overwhelming anxiety, almost 80% feel hopelessness, overwhelmed, exhaustion, loneliness, and sadness, over 15% considered suicide or engaged in self-injury, and 2.4% attempted suicide, with these data even more for students identifying LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and food/housing insecure. Despite the large numbers of students experiencing significant mental health and suicidal issues, only 20% of them sought counseling services in 2020-2021.
The Project's goals are summarized to: (a) bring together fragmented services and programs identified in the needs section under the unifying Stepped Care 2.0 model, (b) address the needs of special populations (e.g., international, LGBTQIA+, food/housing insecure, BIPOC), (c) increase ways for students to be peer-leaders and raise mental health and suicide prevention awareness, and (d) expand the number of gatekeepers to meet students where they are and provide them with multiple pathways to prevention and treatment services on- and off-campus designed to reduce the progression toward needing acute care and treatment as well as reduce suicides to zero. Project strategies include: (1) increasing campus infrastructure and collaboration with community behavioral healthcare providers; (2) developing a coordinated community mental health response plan; (3) providing gatekeeper and psychological first aid training to students, faculty, staff, and informal student supports (e.g., family member, non-roommate friends, significant other, roommate, etc.); (3) providing training and educational seminars promoting mental health and suicide prevention; (4) encouraging voluntary mental health and substance abuse screenings and assessments; and (5) reducing stigma through outreach and peer-led activities to increase help-seeking behavior, particularly for students in special populations (e.g., international, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC students, first generation, food/housing insecure, etc.).
Project objectives are: (1) Increase student engagement in stepped care mental health and suicide prevention treatment, services, and programming by 30% by the end of the project; (2) 80% of students, faculty, and staff will participate in mental health and suicide prevention training and education by the end of the project; (3) Increase the mental health and suicide prevention knowledge and skills of students, faculty, and staff between pre- and post-test by 50% by the end of the project; (4) Increase the number of students voluntarily participating in screenings and assessments by 50% by the end of the project. over baseline established in Year 1; and (5) Decrease students' mental health issues negatively impacting their academic and personal lives by 15% by the end of the project as measured by the NCHA and HMS surveys.
TNS expects to screen 1,000 students, faculty/staff in mental health and substance use, train 2,000 people in suicide awareness and prevention, and in collaboration with Counseling Services, provide no cost mental health services to 3,000 students per year. By project's end, TNS expects to have served 8,000 students, faculty/staff, and informal student supports.