Suicide Prevention

The "+Options" Suicide Prevention Program focuses on developing actions aimed at the prevention of suicidal risk behaviors, associated with emotional suffering, through the delivery of early detection and management tools. Early intervention by the different members and levels of the UC Community is essential to be able to investigate at the community preventive level students who may be presenting signs of suicide risk, in order to generate a timely link with health devices and family networks who have a leading role in the mental health intervention process.

Objectives

The +Options program seeks to prevent emotional suffering and suicidal behavior through various actions, such as training the university community in suicide prevention, psychoeducational activities with students and accompaniment after a suicide attempt or death by suicide of a student.

We have the following services and activities:

PPR Suicide Prevention Trainings

The program’s main intervention in our community is suicide prevention trainings. “PPR: Ask, Persuade, Refer,” is an internationally recognized, evidence-based suicide prevention training that teaches how to recognize the signs a person presents when they are at risk of suicide and how to intervene effectively.

Postventions, interventions, or follow-up following a death by suicide or attempted suicide

A postvention is a group or individual intervention that is carried out after a suicide, and has the objective of reducing the damages and risks associated with the suicidal event in the nearby surviving population. Accompaniment actions are also carried out for university communities that have had to face the suicide attempt of one of their members. These types of interventions are voluntary and are deployed upon request and coordination with the respective academic unit.

Building Options Playground Activity

Psycho-educational intervention based on the construction game “Jenga”, recreated with foam blocks forming a tower of approximately one meter eighty centimeters. This activity focuses on raising awareness and providing information to the student community in relation to the issue of suicide, through an interactive activity, as a means to facilitate the approach of elements of mental health promotion, suicide prevention and emotional suffering, information on the subject, on access networks and community role in suicide prevention.