Expanding Capacity for Suicide Prevention: The ALIVE @ Purdue Train-the-Trainers Program

Abstract

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students (National Mental Health Association & The Jed Foundation, 2002), with 1 in 10 college students reported having seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months (American College Health Association,2007). Although there is a need for consistent suicide prevention programming and training on college campuses (Kisch, Leino, & Silverman, 2005), providing campus-wide outreach and training may strain overwhelmed college counseling centers (Gallagher, 2009). One effective strategy for suicide prevention is gatekeeper training (Isaac et al., 2009;Tompkins & Witt, 2009). Gatekeeper training has been described as “a prevention strategy that improves detection and referral of at-risk individuals” (Tompkins & Witt, 2009, p. 134). A number of scholars (see, for example, Tompkins & Witt, 2009) have suggested that a particularly important group that should receive suicide prevention gatekeeper training in the college environment is resident assistants (RAs).