Suicide Prevention Initiatives
This aim focuses on studying how crisis hotlines work to connect at-risk individuals to needed services, the overall effectiveness of hotlines at responding to crisis, and ways of improving the quality of support provided by crisis hotlines in a given community. It also focuses on heavily promoting the NSPL at all trainings, community events, and meetings. Throughout many federally-funded projects, several thousand advertising materials have been distributed throughout the community to meet this goal. More recently, the following was through a partnership with 211 Brevard, a private non-profit telephone-based crisis helpline in Brevard County, Florida:
This initiative grew out of an adaptation to an existing campaign part of the NSPL. The adaptation was designed to provide those who subscribed for the free service, an ongoing stream of automatic supportive messages, and relevant resources for managing and preventing crisis (e.g., seeking professional support, stories of hope, coping skills). Participants could choose from a few messaging tracks depending on whether they needed help for themselves or a loved one and the type of content they wished to receive. Since the program’s launch, the research team has created an evaluation that assesses the efficacy of the program at reducing symptoms of suicidality for youth. The team is currently recruiting members of the community and USF students to pilot and evaluate the platform.
