The university’s newest course prepares students to save lives.

In 2021, suicide was the second leading cause of death for Ohioans ages 10-34, according to the Ohio Department of Health. In Ohio, one youth dies from suicide every 34 hours, and five Ohioans die by suicide every day.

“We have a suicide problem,” Matt Butler, the Bachelor of Social Work program director, said. “We need to figure out ways that we can have conversations around suicide.”

Through its new evidence-based suicide prevention course, titled Interprofessional Education Suicide Prevention College Curriculum, Kent State looks to change that outcome.

Offered through the College of Applied and Technical Studies’ Bachelor of Social Work program, the three-credit course explores what health professionals can do during a crisis, what organizations and agencies can do to meet the needs of communities and what suicide prevention looks like in action. 

The class operates in a hybrid model, with in-person sections at the Ashtabula, Tuscarawas and Salem regional campuses. To make the course as accessible as possible, it has no prerequisites and all students are encouraged to register. In fact, cross disciplinary interactions support the learning outcomes of this course.

“Suicide is such a massive concern at this moment in time for Ohio, certainly for rural areas in Ohio,” Butler said. “It’s really, really important for us to have this kind of accurate knowledge disseminated across all the professions that we can.”

The Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation developed the course through a federal grant for youth suicide prevention in partnership with the University of Cincinatti, Old Dominion University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The organization has committed to making the course free of cost to all higher educational institutions in Ohio, and Kent State is the first university to implement it.

“This is a game changer,” Austin Lucas, program director for the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation, said. “This is systems level change.”

Butler said students have reacted positively to the course, and the university had to add another section to meet demand. Butler said his favorite part about the course is having a space to discuss suicide.

“Destigmatizing suicide, having these conversations out in the open, affects all of us because we’ve all been touched in some way by this, whether we know it or not,” he said. “I really feel like classes like this are so important.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Alton Northup is a staff reporter. Contact him at [email protected].