UW-River Falls adopts suicide prevention plan after 4 student deaths in 2023
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Campus leaders and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls are starting the fall semester with “a sense of relief.”
The campus has been working on developing a “postvention plan” — a coordinated response among university officials, faculty and staff and some students — in the case of another student death on campus.
It comes as the campus community is nearing a year since losing four students to suicide in just two months, a number that officials confirmed is high for a campus of just 5,000 students and said they were treating as a “suicide cluster.”
Senior Sam McEathron is one of the many resident assistants who were the first line of response with students after the deaths happened last fall. She works as a resident assistant (RA) in May Hall where two of the four students died.
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She and other RAs went through new training on postvention in late August. She said she now feels prepared to handle situations with mental health crises and suicide.
“I’m really excited for the year,” McEathron said. “I’ve met all my girls, and they’re all so sweet and awesome. I have a lot of really fun events planned. I’m not anxious. I do feel very confident with the fact that I could deal with a mental health situation approaching me, like if somebody comes to me saying that they’re having suicidal ideation, like I know I could handle that situation.”
River Falls’ postvention plan was finalized in August with the help of the Jed Foundation (JED), a national nonprofit specializing in suicide prevention, and a committee of campus community members dedicated to postvention. More than 25 faculty and staff showed up to an hour-long presentation unveiling the plan on Sept. 10.
“We hope that we never have to use our postvention plan,” said Laura King, UWRF vice chancellor of student affairs. But if they ever do, “I think overall, people have a pretty clear sense of what their roles are right now, and I think that's what was really important going into the fall semester.”
What’s in UWRF’s postvention plan
The plan contains many of the same elements from the university’s initial response to the student deaths last fall: prioritizing family and friends of the deceased, communicating about the deaths in a way that doesn’t encourage suicide contagion, offering grief support for the campus community, providing mental health resources and counseling and, eventually, leading the campus into healing from the loss.
The new elements are the addition of annual training on postvention and the creation of an internal team for postvention, including a postvention coordinator. The internal team includes the dean of students, vice chancellor for student affairs and strategic enrollment, chief of police, associate director of student health and counseling and director for residence life.
“So in that team, its role is really to convene very quickly after we learn about student death and start the communication with our senior leadership and really help decide if we really activate that postvention process,” said King.
Should the plan be activated, the dean of students would direct and oversee all efforts as postvention coordinator. Those efforts consist of communications, organizing resources and delegating responsibilities.
Nonprofit brings suicide prevention plans to schools across the U.S.
Kurt Michael, senior clinical director at JED, was brought in by the university as a consultant to help create the postvention plan. The appetite for suicide response plans is present nationwide: In the past year, he said he has spoken to about 30 academic institutions seeking information on postvention.
The consulting process for him has been a series of interviews, focus groups, data collection and providing guidelines to help River Falls create their own customized practices for postvention.
He also visited campus in April and met with community members. He said his first impression of the UWRF community was that it was compassionate and resilient.
“What I experienced on campus, and any campus for that matter, is just an overwhelming sense of grief, sadness but ultimately, hope,” said Michael.
JED has touched around 500 academic institutions that include elementary, middle and high schools and college campuses with their work around suicide-focused interventions.
They help develop policies and systems in educational settings surrounding best practices on suicide prevention. The engagement can range from a few conversations over phone or email to more hands-on work after an acute event, like River Falls.
Michael said postvention is beginning to pick up, but is far from being a standard practice in educational spaces.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the average suicide rate for 15-to-24-year-olds in 2022 was 13.62 per 100,000.
“Given the recent epidemiologic trends, I think it's kind of forced more campuses into having hard conversations about things that they would be better to have on hand in advance of a crisis event. And I think for some reason, this really hasn't become normalized enough,” Michael said.
The fact that River Falls is committed to implementing a complete postvention plan is outside of the ordinary, he said.
“I was basically blown away by the level of commitment they had to serving the students,” said Michael. “It wasn't that hard to do this consulting with River Falls, because they were already instinctively doing things that you would want them to do. It's just my job to then help them systematize it and normalize it in a way that's consistent with, you know, good practice around grief support and suicide prevention.”
River Falls looks to locking in on long-term postvention efforts
The University has also expanded virtual mental health support services in August. It includes a telemedicine counseling platform called “Mantra” where students can talk to a licensed counselor, and a peer-to-peer messaging system called “Togetherall.”
Dean of Students Michael Gilmer said Mantra is open 11 p.m. to 11 a.m., when students are “at those points where they have an emergent crisis.” The platform is meant to meet students where they are, whether that’s alone in their room or when they’re feeling stressed about deadlines or projects.
Togetherall is a new platform that’s similar to Reddit, according to Gilmer. Users need a login to post and then can have conversations with each other that are monitored by counselors.
“I like to think of it as that safety net or that web that really holds up our students, but really be able to meet our students where their needs are. Our students are all very different and some people like just going online and chatting, because they’re used to a Reddit type forum. So this really gives us that larger support to be able to connect with our students” said Gilmer.
Next steps for postvention at River Falls are firming up relationships with local county crisis counseling services and maintaining student wellness events, like Mental Health Mondays.
Sophomore Kali Marohn, who is from Rogers, Minn., said it feels strange knowing it’s almost been a year since the campus lost sophomore Isabella Chavira, junior Sabrina Hagstrom, freshman Jasmine Petersen, and junior Mason Crum.
“I think a lot of students that were here feel the same sort of grief, even if they didn’t know the people we lost. I know a couple of my friends want to revisit adding a memorial to the University of Wisconsin - River Falls sign,” said Marohn.
The university will not be initiating any events honoring the one-year mark of the deaths, but will support student-led events like a memorial walk. That’s because postvention guidelines recommend limiting the window for memorializing the deaths to prevent further harm and avoid triggering a potential suicide contagion.
River Falls leaders have learned having a plan for communication is key to responding to traumatic events. But even in their best efforts to cater to everyone, Michael said there will always be criticism.
“There’s always going to be people who are not satisfied, and in part, that could be perfectly legitimate reasons why they’re dissatisfied. Or it could be a reflection of their pain and the suffering they’re experiencing as a result of losing somebody close to them. I’m not going to take issue with any of it,” Michael said. “I’ve never encountered a postvention event where everyone’s been satisfied. But I’m always encouraging folks to have an open mind and to share,” said Michael.
If you or someone you know is struggling, please know trained help is available. Call or text 988 to get connected with a counselor or visit 988lifeline.org to start a chat.