Molloy College

Molloy College’s Student Personal Counseling Center’s proposed program, Stop the Stigma, will be a project to strengthen the infrastructure of the Counseling Center to deliver suicide prevention and education programming. It will jump-start the campus conversation to “stop the stigma” regarding mental health services related to suicide prevention. Through the proposed project, the Counseling Center will execute a comprehensive three-year initiative to address targeted at-risk students and assist them to access services. Efforts will include campus-wide training, development of a crisis protocol, enhanced linkages with outside resources and the expansion of mental health and suicide prevention materials available for students and employees. Stop the Stigma will be launched in the Molloy community in the fall of 2015.

The proposed grant has five goals that will be covered. Goal 1 would initiate the Stop the Stigma program and create an on-campus networking infrastructure. Goal 2 is where the project would set up safe networks where hesitant students can access confidential assistance. This would include an Interactive Screening Program and after-hour crisis hotlines. Goal 3 would be the largest part of the project and will span over two years. This is where the project would develop, design and implement a campus-wide Train-the-Trainer Gatekeeper Program. Through this program, key personnel, selected departments and student leaders will be trained in mental health and suicide prevention and ways to assist at-risk students. Goal 4 would entail partnering with outside agencies to provide educational seminars for targeted populations like veterans, LGBT people, resident students, athletes, students with disabilities and American Indian/Alaska Natives. Molloy will also partner with the New York State Office of Mental Health to host annual state certification training in suicide prevention first aid. Goal 5 would complete the proposed project with expanding the resources and materials in the Counseling Center to be made available for the Molloy College community.  

The Personal Counseling Center hopes this proposed project would assist Molloy College in vital training on student mental health, suicide prevention and crisis response. This project and its success will be measured by the decrease in student emergencies and employee and student response in handling students in crisis. The project’s success will also be measured by the positive response to the trainings and educational program presentations through satisfaction
surveys and anecdotal records along with documented requests for future programming.