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Charity: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Talia Santopadre
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Emerson chapter.

In celebration of the organizations who work day-in and day-out to help and protect those in need, Her Campus Emerson has decided to dedicate all of our content this week to organizations that are important to us.  

For me, I knew that the organization I wanted to highlight was the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

As someone who has struggled with anxiety and depression for many years, I have found myself in positions of helplessness and loneliness more often than not.  While I’ve surrounded myself with people who love me, and who I love, suffering from depression isn’t an easy path. While in recent years I have been able to enjoy many more things, depression will always be a mental illness that I struggle with, whether presently or in the past.  While I can say that I’m much better now, I won’t pretend that with depression, doesn’t come suicidal thoughts. Suicide affects more people than we realize, and typically, those people are some of the happiest appearing people you’ve met.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is a society that is dedicated to raising awareness about the issue of suicide.  They also utilize funds to do research and provide aid to those affected by suicide. AFSP has branches in all 50 states which allows them to hold events and programs all across the country for people who are seeking support, which they have been doing for 30 years.

Their mission is to help save lives, in addition to bring hope to people who are affected by suicide.  According to their website, in order to achieve their mission, they focus on the following:

1.) Funding scientific research.

They use research to improve interventions to help prevent more people from committing suicide. By researching better methods to prevent suicides, we can work toward preventing suicides nationwide.

2.) Educating the public about mental health and suicide prevention.

They use resources to teach the public about how to help people struggling with suicidal thoughts or tendencies.  Many of these individuals don’t seek help, or they don’t know where to find it. It is important to educate the public on how to get people in need in contact with the people who can help them. AFSP encourages communities, schools, and workplaces to make mental health a priority.

3.) Advocating for public policies in mental health and suicide prevention.

AFSP advocates for policies that will improve ways to get help and knowledge around suicide.  By creating policies to educate people about the effects of mental health and the dangers of suicide, we can hopefully prevent more and more deaths.  

4.) Supporting survivors of suicide loss and those affected by suicide in our mission.

As much as they hope to prevent suicide, at this time, there are still a large number of suicides committed every day.  This type of loss can bring a lot of pain to families, and AFSP

While AFSP is doing amazing work to help break stigma surrounding depression and the effects of mental health, they can’t help anyone who doesn’t reach out to them.  Because they can’t help everyone, it’s important for us to fill in the gaps; we need to share information needed for people who are struggling with these feelings to get them the help they need.  To learn more about how to spot the signs of a potential suicide, or to learn more about suicide in general, you can visit the AFSP website here.

If you know someone who is struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, make sure they know that you are there for them (and actually be there for them, don’t just pretend you are).  If you fear that someone you know might be considering suicide, make sure they have the information they need to receive the help they need, or make sure you are telling the correct people who can give them the help they need.  The suicide prevention lifeline can be reached by dialing 1-800-273-8255, and there are available agents 24 hours a day.  

Want to learn more?  Want to donate? Check out the AFSP website!

*All information in this article was pulled from and can thus be found on the AFSP website.  

 

Talia is the Campus Correspondent for Her Campus at Emerson. Talia is also a Chapter Advisor, Region Leader, and HSA Advisor. She has previously worked as an intern for the national headquarters of Her Campus in the community management department. Talia is a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College in a 4+1 combined bachelor's and master's program in publishing. She is an aspiring writer and publisher. Talia is known for living life with her journal, a pen, and three lovely cats.