Since January 2010, campus police have responded to approximately 69 calls about suicide attempts. Since November 2012, eight UB students have completed suicide.
Last week, UB participated in National Suicide Prevention Week (Sept. 8-12) and offered multiple programs across five days. On Thursday Sept. 11, Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR), an institute that offers suicide preventing training programs, education and clinical material, suicide prevention training had its first out of three sessions during this fall semester as a part of National Suicide Prevention Week.
“We need to be talking about suicide,” said David Gilles-Thomas, a presenter of the QPR program and the assistant director of Counseling Student Health & Wellness. “For so long, it’s been one of those taboo subjects, and we need to break through that.”
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students and the number one cause of suicide is due to untreated depression, according suicide.org.
The week started Sept. 9 with Meg Hutchinson, who spoke on behalf of Active Minds, a UB club. She educated students about mental health issues, suicide and how to cope with these topics. The next day, the Wellness Office held an event in the Student Union with tabled demonstrations. The week ended with an Out of the Darkness Walk in Delaware Park held by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on Sept. 13.
The first session of the suicide prevention training was held last week and there will be more training sessions on Oct. 13 and Nov. 17.
“In an important part of all the QPR training, all the suicide prevention work we do is as a community,” Gilles-Thomas said. “We have a responsibility to each other and the only way we can move forth with that is making sure [suicide] is part of our conversation.”
The three letters in QPR focuses on how to “question” a person about suicide, “persuade” the person to get help and “refer” the person to the appropriate resource.
QPR aims to create “gatekeepers,” people who are in a position to recognize a crisis and warning signs that someone may be contemplating suicide. They say everyone can become a gatekeeper, especially on a campus with large populations of students and faculty.
Before the session began, presenters told the participants how the session could affect some people more emotionally than others.
The session began with a film developed by several universities, based on real life experiences about attempted suicides and friends and families who had lost someone through suicide.
Gilles-Thomas admitted even after watching the same film after countless of times, it still moved him.
In the second half of the training session Melinda Haggerty, a presenter of the QPR program and the associate director of counseling Student Health & Wellness, introduced the Wall of Resistance – pieces of paper printed to look like bock walls. Participants wrote a personal “something to live for” on each brick.
The training then concentrated on detecting possibly signs of depression including abrupt behavioral and verbal changes or clues. The presenters talked about some of the notable symptoms of depression including fatigue or loss of energy, diminished ability to think or concentrate, a change of sleeping and eating patterns and a decrease in sexual drive.
QPR is not intended to be a form of counseling or treatment but to offer hope through positive action, according to one of the program notes.
Haggerty believes the session was interactive and hopes people who came to the training session will be aware they can apply what they learned to the future.
She believes “[suicide] is important to address and that it is something we do not address enough.”
Haggerty is hopeful participants “know that they are supported” in any of their efforts of trying to support anyone who is struggling and to also always think, “Oh, if I’m struggling, there is also someone to help me.”
Gilles-Thomas encourages people to learn about QPR so it “demystifies a lot of our beliefs about suicide.” He believes counseling services will always find a way to help people who are in need of help.
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