KSU begins offering suicide prevention course
KENT – Kent State University has announced a new course in suicide prevention.
The university said in a news release that it will be offered in person on three of its satellite campuses – Salem, Ashtabula and Tuscarawas. It is the first university in Ohio to offer the course to students outside of the colleges at which it was developed – University of Cincinnati, Old Dominion University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
In its release, Kent State cited statistics and said the numbers are expected to increase in the next reporting period.Recent data from the Ohio Department of Health shows Ohio averaged more than 1,700 suicide deaths between 2016-2021.
Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation funded the creation and original implementation of the course, called Interprofessional Education Suicide Prevention College Curriculum, and all its materials to interested institutions willing to provide this course as in-person, online or blended in its delivery.
The course will be offered through the College of Applied and Technical Studies’ bachelor of social work program, but, because of its uniqueness and broad application, will be open to all students at Kent State. The class is offered in a hybrid model, with much of the coursework online.
“Working in partnership with the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation to become the first institution of higher education outside of the original implementation sites to offer this course since its development is a great honor,” said Peggy Shadduck, Ph.D., vice president for Regional Campuses and dean of the College of Applied and Technical Studies. “We are thrilled to be bringing this course offering to Kent State University as part of our new bachelor of social work program. This helps fulfill a huge gap in education and training that we would like to help mitigate.”
The course is being offered as an elective with no pre-requisites to provide opportunities for inter-disciplinary learning. Students across a wide range of majors, such as nursing, psychology, education and more, can benefit from the opportunity to learn about evidence-based suicide prevention strategies.
“Suicide is really a very specialized area of practice and, even in master’s level programs, you don’t ever get an entire semester about this topic,” said Kent State lecturer and BSW program director Matt Butler, MSSA, LISW-S, LICDC-CS. “These are skills usually learned on the job in the field or, sometimes, in continuing education courses. To have a chance to talk to undergrads about the cutting-edge aspects of suicide prevention, intervention, postvention, etc., is very exciting.”
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: KSU begins offering suicide prevention course
