I CARE: Development and Evaluation of a Campus Gatekeeper Training Program for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention |
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| Authors: | Marian Reiff Meeta Kumar Batsirai Bvunzawabaya Soumya Madabhushi Alaina Spiegel Benjamin Bolnick |
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| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA |
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| Abstract: | Addressing the need for suicide prevention on campus, I CARE training, developed and facilitated by counseling center clinicians, trains students, staff, and faculty to provide support to students experiencing distress or mental health problems. We assessed its impact using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analyses demonstrated significant increases in knowledge of intervention skills and readiness to intervene from pretraining to posttraining. Knowledge and readiness remained significantly higher than preworkshop for the entire follow-up evaluation period, extending 15 months posttraining. Qualitative analyses revealed the value of experiential activities and emotional processing in increasing participants’ comfort and preparedness to intervene in challenging situations. |
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| Keywords: | College students emotional processing experiential learning gatekeeper training mental health promotion mixed methods program evaluation suicide prevention |
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