Listen Here
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
To recognize National Suicide Prevention Week, Sept. 7-13, counselors from the University of Findlay’s (UF) Counseling Services hosted its annual Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) Gatekeeper training sessions for faculty, staff, and students. QPR are the three steps in an emergency response to suicidal ideation. Despite the event being open to the public, no students attended the training.
Student training took place in the Alumni Memorial Union (AMU) Endly Room Thursday afternoon.
“To be clear, we did advertise this,” said Hannah Craig, a clinical mental health counselor at the UF Counseling Center. She said that while there is not usually a large crowd for the annual student training, there are usually some stuents who come.
A campus-wide email was sent on Sept. 3 announcing the QPR training as well as a day-long on-campus mental health retreat with yoga, meditation, and other self-care activities on Saturday. While no students showed up for the Thursday QPR event, just steps away in the AMU atrium, the Buford Center’s “Passive Aggressive Bingo” event drew a significant crowd. Prizes for “Passive Aggressive Bingo” included a UF blanket and Yeti tumbler. Counseling Services was not informed that there would be another event happening in the AMU at the same time, according to Craig.
Counseling Services had hoped to train students to be “gatekeepers.” The goal of QPR is to keep someone considering suicide from attempting suicide until they can get to a trained mental health provider, connecting them to someone higher on the “survival chain.” The person who performs the first intervention is called a “gatekeeper.”
Gatekeepers are trained to watch for signs of suicidal ideation, such as reckless behavior, loss of interest in activities, and expressing suicidal thoughts both verbally and non-verbally. Gatekeepers are trained to proactively ask questions about mental health and suicide. Asking about suicide does not increase the risk of attempted or completed suicide.
“If you’re having a gut feeling or something feels off, it’s better to just ask,” Craig said. “If it’s on your mind, it’s probably on their mind, too.”
If the person says that they are considering suicide, the next step of the QPR method is to persuade the suicidal person against attempting suicide by listening to them, discussing alternatives, and offering hope in any form possible.
“We want to give them the chance to see other options,” said Jodi Firsdon, Senior Director of Counseling Services.
In the final step, the gatekeeper connects the person they are helping to a mental health professional. The best referral is to take the suicidal person to someone who can directly help. If this is not possible, the goal should be to get the person to make a commitment to get help or simply getting the person to accept help at a later date.
Only 36% of college students report having positive mental health, and one in three college students experiences depression or anxiety, according to the most recent Healthy Minds Survey. Suicide is also one of the leading causes of death among college students, according to the Suicide Prevention Research Center. However, if one suicide attempt is stopped, 80% of people never attempt again, according to a 2017 study.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story discusses suicide awareness and prevention. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis hotline can be reached in the U.S. at 988, and Counseling Services has walk-in counseling on Tuesdays from 2 to 4 p.m. and Fridays from 9 to 10:30 a.m.
