September marks Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about mental health and promoting strategies to prevent suicide. In recognition of this, the Center for Campus Wellness (CCW) has been hosting events and campaigns aimed at fostering open conversations and support within the campus community.
Katelyn Russell, a peer well-being ambassador with the CCW, said small actions can make a difference in suicide prevention.
“Our goal is to increase awareness about suicide, its impact, warning signs and how we can prevent it,” Russell said. “The idea is that reaching out to people, either through text or through a written note, is one of the most basic ways to prevent suicide.”
Community Events
In partnership with the Counseling Center and the College of Fine Arts, the CCW hosted a chalk art event outside the Union. The activity gave students a space to write personal messages about mental health alongside murals created by Fine Arts students.
Christina LeCluyse, associate director of programming and outreach at the Counseling Center, said the “chalk messages of hope” served as both a collective art exhibit and a reminder that students are not alone.
“I just want us to continue having conversations on campus about mental health,” LeCluyse said. “Today’s students don’t necessarily feel stigma in the sense of ‘if I go to therapy, I must be crazy,’ but they may compare themselves to others and think everyone else seems fine, especially with the influence of social media. That assumption can make them feel worse about needing help. I want to dispel that myth.”
The Counseling Center provides free one-on-one appointments and other clinical services to support students’ social and emotional development. LeCluyse said outreach programming is a key part of prevention. “A lot of preventative measures are done through our outreach programming,” LeCluyse said. “With outreach, one of our main objectives is preemptive work—raising awareness about mental health concerns, providing resources, education, support, skill-building and destigmatizing mental health.”
Impacts of Mental Health and Suicide
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15-24, and high school students with symptoms of depression are more than twice as likely to drop out of school. LeCluyse mentions how peer conversations about mental health can help lessen the risk of suicide, as they can “validate and acknowledge” someone’s experiences.
“Asking the question can actually be relieving, because it indicates care and opens the door for a peer to serve as a bridge to professional services,” LeCluyse said. “Sometimes just saying, ‘hey, let’s hop on the Counseling Center website,’ or walking them over to a counselor can make the difference — sometimes even between life and death.”
Russell said one of the most meaningful parts of her role on campus has been seeing students engage with the campaign. “Some people weren’t even aware that it was Suicide Prevention Awareness Month,” Russell said. “I think just being exposed to people and ideas that are different from my own, I think I would say that that’s the most rewarding part so far of being in social work, as well as also working in the Center for Campus Wellness.”
Wrapping Up September
The CCW ended the last week of September with a Question, Persuade, Refer Workshop aimed at teaching trauma-informed strategies to support individuals.
LeCluyse said reaching out for support is a healthy step students should take when struggling, and workshops like these help move the campus community in that direction.
“Not everybody is fine, and it is absolutely okay to seek help,” she said. “It isn’t a sign of weakness or inadequacy — it’s a chance to learn more about yourself, to get support and to figure out new ways of handling struggles.”
John Hedberg • Oct 3, 2025 at 3:57 pm
Did anyone know that there used to be 2 entire parking lots adjacent to the Student Life & HPER Centers, which were built for the expressed purpose of enhancing student physical and mental wellbeing through cathartic exercise, sports, and healthy physical expression?
The University arbitrarily closed both parking lots without supplying any replacement parking, thereby marginalizing the majority of students, who commute to and from jobs and other important responsibilities between classes. In other words, the administration built a Life Center specifically to address student wellness needs, and then spent public money plowing under the only existing parking which allowed the majority of students to use both Student Life and HPER facilities to relieve stress and stimulate their own inherent endogenous healthy homeostasis mechanisms.
Why would the insensitive, evidently entitled, elites in charge of this shack, who are paid at the public expense to place the needs of Utah students first (it’s a state university~), deliberately debilitate those same students by charging them to build health facilities, and then spending Utah dollars plowing under 95% of parking, insuring the majority of those same extremely time-pressed Utah students won’t have the access they need to procure their own healing wellness through the Student Life Center and the entire HPER Complex?
Who would deliberately plow under both wellness parking areas at a commuter school without building some kind of alternative parking structure students can use to access the resources purchased with their own families’ dollars?
Keep in mind, this school was built to serve the least affluent, most economically marginalized students from the most hard-pressed neighborhoods, the most diverse, the hardest-working, and these kind generous folks the University, who hired to serve their needs, treat them like pariahs at their own state institution, even while they work to pay for classes, for housing, for all the expenses these same pampered inconsiderate administrators never have to think about.
Students navigate tight priorities while administrators make impactful decisions by placing their entitled preferences above students’ necessities.
How about taking the one remaining grassy space where one of the former parking lots was plowed under and build multi-level parking, so that marginalized (commuter) students can relieve their own mental health stressors through constructive fitness at the very facilities designed & built to help them do that?
Wow, this is an institute of education~! 🤔☺️