According to the Ohio Department of Health, Ohio averaged more than 1,700 suicide deaths yearly between 2016–2021. Suicide was the second leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 10 through 34, and the number of suicide deaths increased by 8% from 2020 through 2021. Despite the increasing numbers, there has been little education for practitioners related to suicide prevention outside of their experience in the field.
This fall, began offering an evidence-based suicide prevention course in partnership with the (OSPF). The foundation funded the creation of the course for colleges and universities, along with pilot programs at the University of Cincinnati, Old Dominion University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Kent State is the first university in Ohio to provide the course to its students (outside of those schools participating in OSPF’s pilot program). Offered as an elective through Kent State’s College of Applied and Technical Studies’ Bachelor of Social Work program, the course has no pre-requisites and is open to all undergraduate and graduate students at Kent State.
“We are thrilled to bring this course to as part of our new Bachelor of Social Work Program,” says Peggy Shadduck, PhD, vice president for Regional Campuses and dean of the College of Applied and Technical Studies. “This helps fill a huge gap in education and training that we would like to help mitigate.”
The course content is drawn from multidisciplinary resources and perspectives, including counseling, ethics, law, nursing, medicine, psychology, public health and social work. Much of the coursework is online, but students can take the in-person portions at the Ashtabula, Salem and Tuscarawas campuses.
“We want this information disseminated to as many people as possible so we can increase the chances of someone in a crisis or someone impacted by a suicide death being able to interact with someone who knows how to handle it,” says Matt Butler, MSSA, LISW-S, LICDC-CS, Kent State lecturer and program director for the Bachelor of Social Work program. “We have to have conversations about suicide and suicide prevention if we’re going to make an impact in the next generation of folks’ lives here in Ohio and beyond Ohio.”