Being at a new college can be exciting and stimulating, but it can also be overwhelming and stressful. Not all students can adjust to new environments and situations like others can, which can lead to depression.
At the beginning of first semester last school year, a state-wide program called Ask, Listen, Refer was created for Missouri campuses. The purpose of the program was to further suicide prevention education not only among faculty, but also with an emphasis toward student involvement.
“I think that part of the idea behind the Ask, Listen, Refer program is that about seventy-five percent of the people who attempt suicide give some warning signs before they give an indication they’re feeling suicidal. A lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know how to recognize the warning signs and help people to get help if they’re feeling suicidal. So the idea behind it is to try to let as many people as possible know about what the warning signs are so they are in the position to help people get some help,” Jamie Linsin, counseling psychologist, said.
The program’s Web site launched in August 2009, and began at the University of Missouri St. Louis the following September. It is in place at twenty-five college campuses across the state, designed for college students especially.
“When we wrote the grant we wrote it with the intention of putting this program online because college students are a really hard population to train in person, because they’re often so busy and don’t have the time or things on campus to go to an in person training. The fact that this program is available 24 hours a day, they can come back to it at anytime if they’ve forgotten some information and all they need is an email address. [This setup] really seemed appropriate for the college student population,” Kelly Sheline, suicide prevention graduate assistant, University of Missouri Columbia, said.
The training program takes about twenty to thirty minutes to complete. Once in the Web site, a student or faculty member sets their account up with his or her email. To get an idea of how effective the training program is, a survey of demographics is taken. Afterward, a series of information and videos are shown. Once students and faculty complete a test at the end of the training, a certificate of completion is given.
Since it has begun, over 1,400 people have completed the training statewide. At UM-St. Louis, 110 have completed the program.
“I think it’s a really valuable program, it’s a way of getting the information out there because as a psychologist, if people are in distress, they’ll come to a psychologist sometimes to talk about their distress, but I’m not usually the first person that [hears about it]. Usually a friend, family member or classmate is going to find out first if there’s distress a person is dealing with. I think the reason that programs like Ask, Listen, Refer are important is that they help people to be aware that as a friend, family member, classmate or roommate, that we’re all in the position to be able to help,” Linsin said.
