QPR: Question, Persuade, Refer

Greetings,

Thank you for your continued support of the Tennessee Tech University #hopestrongeagles suicide prevention program. Your continued support empowers and inspires us to promote prevention, awareness, and education across our campus. Our department is currently entering into year three of this project. We are pleased to provide you with a few updates relevant to our project’s successes.

The #hopestrongeagles program members are helping students better understandsuicide prevention and awareness through our Question, Persuade, Refer training sessions to assist students in being able to ask the difficult questions.

Our program members have worked diligently over the last several months to provide students with information that they may need in order to help a friend. The TTU Counseling Center have trained a total of 725 people since January 2016. The Counseling Center has crisis prevention and lethal means restriction education information to aid in the overall process of helping students through all aspects of difficult situations.

Events

On August 21, 2017, our program members handed out a variety of resource materials during the great American solar eclipse party hosted by TTU.
The program members for #hopestrongeagles were proud to co-sponsor and attend at the Light to Hope event by Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network since program began.
During suicide prevention week, program members distributed 20 #hopestrongeagle bracelets, 107 #hopestrongeagle bendeez key tags, 19 suicide awareness stickers, and 22 diverse student brochures.
Program members co-sponsored a gaming night event in October with the SMASH Bros Club which included suicide prevention and awareness information. This event was designed to “Stomp out Stigma” associated with mental health and suicide.
The Counseling Center also sponsored an interactive tabling event for collegiate alcohol awareness week in October.
Other events included resiliency fairs, new students orientation, Late Night Tech Night, Destination Relaxation, destress during finals week, class presentations and workshops on prevention, and the substance abuse prevention committee.

Awareness

Every Tuesday and Thursday during the school year the counseling center set up an interactive display on the first floor of the RUC. This display raises awareness about the counseling center as well as provides information about suicide prevention. There are always suicide hotline cards, as well as the after-hours hotline and 24-7 crisis text line for the counseling center. This fall, at this display, we gave out 500 #hopestrongeagles welcome back bags to students during Week of Welcome. Our team also distributed 300 #hopestrongeagle door hangers with de-stress plans to Tech Village Apartments; along with, 35 of our new suicide prevention posters, 100 in crisis text flyers, and 35 in crisis text posters. We also provided 500 prevention and resource bags across campus to staff to help promote the after-hours suicide prevention hotline, crisis text line, and general suicide awareness/prevention.

Upcoming Goals

Future goals of our program include continued opportunities for providing prevention and awareness to the campus community.
Improve collaboration on campus through a review of campus suicide prevention polices and make recommendations based on best practices and data analysis.

If you would like more information or if you would like to schedule a Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) suicide prevention training, please contact the Tennessee Technological University Counseling Center.

Again we thank you once more for your continual support of the #hopestrongeagles grant funded suicide prevention program in raising awareness and preventing suicide throughout the Tennessee Technological University campus community.

WE ARE #HOPESTRONGEAGLES.

Counseling Center / Box 5094 / 1000 N Dixie Ave., Cookeville, TN 38505 / 931-372-3331 / tntech.edu