From Monday, Feb. 11 through Friday, Feb. 15. posters covered with reasons to live another day decorated Elizabethtown College and encouraged students, faculty and staff to keep going. The posters were part of the Tomorrow Needs You campaign, which advocates for suicide prevention.
The College’s campaign was sponsored by the Office of Student Wellness, but the general Tomorrow Needs You initiative is a National Suicide Prevention Week effort run by To Write Love on Her Arms. The latter is a nonprofit organization that strives to find hope and resources for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-harm or suicidal thoughts.
Assistant Director of Health Promotion Joni Eisenhauer and members of the Student Wellness Advocacy Group (S.W.A.G.) led the campaign.
“My freshman year someone committed suicide, and it is still a very prominent issue on campus and everywhere,” senior S.W.A.G. member Missy Ziegler said.
“Suicide prevention is a sensitive topic, so it helps to raise awareness from a positive angle,” Eisenhauer said.
National Suicide Prevention Week takes place every September, but Eisenhauer and the S.W.A.G. members wanted a simple, positive way to raise awareness of suicide prevention and self-love.
“I think [the campaign] went really well,” Ziegler said. “A lot of people wrote positive notes and were excited that it was going on during Valentine’s Day week.”
The S.W.A.G. staff hung a total of 17 posters and left markers for students, faculty and staff to write on them. One poster was in The Well, another was placed in a Counseling Services window, and another hung on the main floor of the High Library. The rest were placed in other common spaces around campus.
Some people wrote motivational messages to those who read the posters. Ziegler’s favorite of these reads, “Place your hand over your heart. Can you feel that? It’s called purpose. Don’t ever give up.”
Anonymous personal reasons carrying people into tomorrow ranged from “to eat something delicious” and “to play Transformers with my son to demonstrate that kindness matters” and “to be a positive force in the community.”
“This is a good way to let everyone reflect on their contributions to the world and feel like they have something to provide tomorrow and continually the following days,” Eisenhauer said.
This was the first year of the Tomorrow Needs You campaign for the College, and it was not without a few difficulties. Two snow-filled days during the week of the campaign affected people’s ability to walk to locations with posters, possibly decreasing the overall number of responses. Eisenhauer and Ziegler said they would like to keep the posters up for longer than a week next time.
Overall, though, both said they are satisfied with how the campaign went and have plans for the future of suicide prevention at Etown. Eisenhauer said she would like to create a guide for faculty that contains information on the signs of self-harm and what do to if someone learns that a person they know exhibits such behaviors.
“The campus wants to help, but sometimes there’s not enough information out there to help individuals with suicidal thoughts or self-inflicted pain and those around them,” Eisenhauer said.
According to Eisenhauer, professors showed the official Tomorrow Needs You campaign video to a total of 200 students during classes. A link to the video was featured in the Campus News announcement about the campaign.
According to Ziegler, The Well’s staff plans to create a larger poster using messages people wrote throughout the week. This poster will be displayed somewhere central either this year or in the fall. Zeigler said this poster could “show what the campaign looked like” for those who could not participate due to the snow as well as encourage people as they go about their days.
“Just having one strategy for people here to recognize the signs of someone who might be suicidal, and have resources around campus so they can help out that person, is beneficial,” Ziegler said. “It’s little messages like ‘Don’t ever give up if you’re having a bad day,’ ‘Lean on others’ and ‘One bad day won’t ruin your whole entire life’ that really help.”
The Well is located in BSC 247. Students experiencing suicidal thoughts or symptoms of depression can make appointments with Counseling Services in BSC 216 speak to an on-call crisis counselor after hours by calling 717-361-1111.
