The Syracuse University Counseling Center was awarded a $75,000 Campus Suicide Prevention Grant Sept. 20 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The federal grant will provide $75,000 a year, renewable for three years, said SU Counseling Center director and grant project director, Rebecca Dayton. SU, one of 22 colleges and universities nationwide to receive the grant, was given the maximum monetary award.

The Counseling Center worked on the ‘lengthy, time-consuming application process’ last spring in order to submit the application by the June 1, 2005 deadline, Dayton said.

The Counseling Center is excited about what the grant will allow them to do on campus, Dayton said.

‘What we do now is a lot of good and important clinical work with students who express a need for help,’ she said. ‘The grant will allow us to broaden our focus more.’

The grant project is divided into two components. One side of the project will help students in crisis, while the other will help students cope with stress and emotions, Dayton said.

The first component involves more extensive training for faculty and staff in helping depressed or suicidal students, said staff therapist, Cory Wallack. The training will focus on residence life staff. The residence directors and assistant residence directors have already been trained by the center, he said.

‘Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students,’ Wallack said.

A health survey taken on campus also showed that up to 10 percent of students think about killing themselves. The training workshops hope to promote communication among residence life staff and students to show those in crisis that they are not alone, he said.

‘The grant gives us a valuable opportunity to enhance the emotional resiliency and health of students on our campus,’ said Counseling Center Assistant Director and Assistant Project Director Susan Pasco.

The second component of the grant project deals with teaching students ‘a way to tolerate stress and manage painful emotional experiences,’ Pasco said. The Counseling Center plans to introduce mindfulness-based stress reduction programs to the student body.

The Counseling Center plans to offer free 8-week stress-reduction clinics for SU students starting in the spring semester, Dayton said.

‘This program is not about how to get rid of stress, but rather about how to manage stress,’ Pasco said. ‘We will teach specific coping mechanisms.’

A big part of the grant project will also involve research.

‘We will be studying the effectiveness of the two programs,’ Pasco said. ‘The grant is an incredibly opportunity to do research in this new expanding mental health area.’

The Counseling Center is excited to begin establishing the programs funded by the grant.

‘The programs we will implement are new, different and innovative programs not seen on many other college campuses,’ Pasco said.

Published on October 1, 2005 at 12:00 pm