Community Considerations for Suicide Prevention Programs

When developing a suicide prevention program in a rural community, it is important to listen to and involve community members as well as healthcare providers and other collaborators. Community listening sessions can help programs to better understand community members' needs, assets, and experiences related to economic instability, limited access to quality health and mental health care, substandard housing, limited educational attainment, unemployment, and poverty. These social determinants of health play a large role in suicide risk.

Listening sessions often highlight various needs within a rural population and can help guide a multi-tiered intervention approach. For example, upstream prevention efforts can build and strengthen community infrastructure, repair generational family trauma, and strengthen positive youth development (for example, through mentoring like Big Brothers Big Sisters programs or social ecological mentoring. Social and wraparound services can support those who need mental health services. Stigma, disbelief in, and negative associations with mental health care can be countered by providing accurate information about mental health and social services programs.

Suicide prevention programs should seek to advance access to quality behavioral healthcare. Programs should be developed and tailored for specific populations of interest. For example, it is important to consider whether the rural suicide prevention program is designed for an entire community or a specific population such as veterans, farmers, older adults, or youth. Involving community members and collaborators from these groups when developing program content and messages will help ensure the program is appropriate and meets their needs.