Directing Change: A novel approach to suicide prevention

• In Event: Past and Future of School-Based Youth Suicide Prevention: Overview and Exemplar from the Field

Abstract

Paper 2 will present a) the design and b) implementation experience of a novel school-based mental health/suicide prevention program "Directing Change," that may be a catalyst for changing norms about suicide, mental health, and help-seeking for all students, and address and advance health equity for minoritized youth, particularly.

In Directing Change, a program “disguised as a film contest,” students create short films in mental health/suicide prevention and disseminate them to the school community. By making short films in groups, students learn key elements of upstream suicide prevention (recognizing the signs; finding the words; connecting students to trusted adults and to help), submit them to a contest, and disseminate films locally. The “mini-grant” Directing Change program is a packaged version for schools that offers resources in exchange for film submission and dissemination requirements. In the mini-grant program, an advisor leads 1-3 classes or clubs in the program. Each class/club makes at least five 30- or 60-second films in groups (using program materials, rubrics, and disqualifying rules). Students storyboard, script, video, and edit the films, and submit them to the state-wide contest, and they plan events to screen films in the school community. Youth-driven content draws from the lives of youth – often their experiences navigating identity, amplifying youth voice and mitigating stigma. And, the program is intended to change norms around mental health and suicide by infusing prevention messages at multiple levels of youth’s social ecology (peers, teachers, parents, community members). See figure 1.

Directing Change launched in 2012 in California and has grown to an average of 2,717 student participants in an average of 168 schools and organizations in each of the last five years. The program has served a diverse demographic group of students that represent the racial-ethnic composition of California. Despite COVID-19, most participating schools exceeded mini-grant requirements, and most held events to showcase films, reaching 40,800 people. This rich, decade-long history provides considerable implementation data on dosage and reach that will be reviewed as part of this presentation. Data on implementation lays the groundwork for a study of this program’s impact (currently underway).

Notably, Directing Change is unique in school interventions in that it offers schools substantial flexibility of implementation, as the program can be implemented in a variety of differing classes (e.g., film, English, health), or clubs (e.g., mental health, GSA). The program’s fit with “typical” academic activities are consistent with a diffusion of innovation framework (Rogers, 2003). Yet, doing so could have implications for implementation variation. With Directing Change as an exemplar, we will discuss this inherent tradeoff in school-based prevention: how to design a program for maximal implementation strength while offering opportunities for flexibility and local tailoring, with potential for scale.

In presenting the design of Directing Change, we present a model for working with schools via existing school structures, in an ecologically-infused framework. In doing so, this paper offers a model not only for suicide prevention programming, but for school-based youth intervention, as well.

Authors

• Jana Sczersputowski
  Presenting Author

• Devin Saragosa-Harris

• Stan Collins