Health Service and Counseling and Mental Health Service (CMHS) applied during winter break for a grant from the federal government.
If received, the grant would go toward improving suicide prevention programs on campus in the next few years.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will award grants to up to 15 institutions of higher education. These grants are intended to "facilitate a comprehensive approach to preventing suicide in institutions of higher education."
Schools that receive the grants this year will be given up to $100,000 per year for up to three years, and they will have to match the money given by the grants with funding of their own.
Tufts will move ahead with a revamped suicide-prevention program regardless of whether they receive the grant, according to Ian Wong, director of health education.
"This is something that we're moving forward with, whether we get the grant or not," he said. "We might have to do it in parts ... The key to it, for the most part, is being able to hire [an] extra person."
Wong said that money from the grant would enable the creation of a new position to oversee suicide-prevention programs at Tufts.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among those aged 18 to 24. According to ABC News, approximately 1,100 college students take their own lives each year. At Tufts, freshman Lily Karian committed suicide in her dorm room in December 2006.
Wong said that the university's Counseling and Mental Health Service hopes to educate community members about symptoms of depression and suicidal tendencies and remove the stigma associated with mental health issues. He said that the main question is how to encourage students to seek help at an earlier stage of their mental illness.
"One of our concerns is making sure students are seeking help early because a lot of times we have students say they have been struggling with a problem for a long time," he said. "How do we get students to seek help, and how do we get staff and students to recognize when students are in distress?"
The program would involve a number of components, including a campus-wide awareness program called "Tufts Community Cares," training for residential assistants (RAs), staff and faculty, and an educational component for parents.
RAs, staff and faculty already receive education about the symptoms of mental illness, but their educational programs are separate. CMHS plans on combining the programs, and the money from the grant could help with this process, Wong said.
"We figured everyone at Tufts either has an RA or a faculty member ... to interact with," he said. "The unique thing that we're doing this year is combining the two groups together." He added that discussions would focus on how to reduce the stigma associated with suicide prevention and how to conduct interventions with students.
Wong said that Tufts plans to match the funding provided by SAMHSA primarily by factoring in staff hours and overhead that Health Service and CMHS would be paying for anyway.
Wong said that he used to help colleges successfully apply for the grant when he worked at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health prior to coming to Tufts.
CMHS also would like to work with select minority students from Tufts' six culture centers, according to Wong.
"A lot of times, those groups don't seek mental help at the same rates as other students," he said.
Nancy Davis, the coordinator for the Campus Suicide Prevention Grants Program, said that the grant program has been implemented on and off and in different incarnations over the past few years.
"[It] started in 2005 in response to the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act that Congress passed," she said. Davis added that the son of Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) took his own life, which prompted the senator to create the bill providing funding for mental and behavioral health services on college campuses.
"We try to help grantees figure out how to sustain their projects and activities," even if they do not receive federal funding, Davis said.
Tufts may not find out until August or September if it will receive the grants, which would start funding the university's programs in fiscal year 2009, which begins Oct. 1, 2008.
Davis said that the grants are popular with institutions of higher education.
"I would say that there is a tremendous amount of interest in this program, so it's a pretty competitive program," she said.
Nina Ford contributed reporting to this article.
