Building Capacity for Campus Suicide Prevention: A Policy Practice Partnership

Post-secondary student mental health is of great concern, with increased rates of anxiety, depression, feelings of isolation, and suicidality observed. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health stressors and concerns about campus suicides, already on the rise. In response, the BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions has funded the BC Campus Suicide Prevention Initiative (CSPI), partnering with the Canadian Mental Health Association, BC division (CMHA BC) who will distribute funding and offer technical support to all 25 BC publicly funded post-secondary institutions. This HSIF project will evaluate the implementation and early impacts of the CSPI, identify where further support is needed, and provide recommendations for how the public health system can ensure long-term and sustainable impacts and national scale-up to improve post-secondary suicide prevention and overall mental health and well-being. This study has the following aims: 1. to monitor early outcomes across the CSPI program's implementation; 2. to understand the mediating role of CMHA BC (program administrator and technical support coordinator) in the collaborative processes and outcomes of participating post-secondary institutions; and 3. to assess scalability and sustainability of the CSPI in BC and nationally. An evaluation-based multi-method approach will be used, to thoroughly identify how the CSPI works, for whom, and in what contexts - illustrated through CMO configurations (Contextual conditions, generative Mechanisms, and Outcomes). Qualitative stakeholder interviews, collection of project documents, and observing technical support sessions will inform creation and analysis of data. Ongoing analyses, used to build CMO configurations, will focus on understanding how CSPI implementation operates and with what effect. Findings will be leveraged to directly affect and optimize suicide prevention programs, policies, and resources locally, nationally and internationally.