If you are sitting in the seating area adjacent to the cafeteria in Building 115, you will see an announcement about Project SPEAK on the TV monitors. If you frequent the Falcon Hope Center, you will see Project SPEAK literature on the counters there. One of the other ways a student can find out about this essential program is at Daytona State College campus events. These campus events, however, may be intimidating to the exact students that Project SPEAK is trying to reach.
The SPEAK in Project SPEAK stands for “Suicide Prevention Education And Knowledge.” The grant proposal for Project SPEAK states “Project SPEAK will address suicide, mental health, and substance abuse issues at Daytona State College by engaging students and employees in training, education, and awareness activities, and by improving systems for identifying and serving at risk students.”
This program serves the entire campus with a special focus on athletes, residential students, LGBTQ+ individuals, veterans, low-income, and first-generation students.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently published the provisional figures of the suicide rate for 2022. There was a 2.6% increase in deaths from suicide from 2021 to 2022. These numbers seem to indicate the growing importance of services that address mental illness and suicide.
Miguel Rivera, the Director of Counseling and Accessibility Services here at DSC, who works closely with Bethany Session, the coordinator of Project Speak and Associate Director of Student Development, says these numbers can be attributed to the stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness.
Rivera feels that the students themselves are ignoring these issues. “There is still the perception that you are weak if you have a mental illness,” he said. “A student feels that they will be treated differently if they admit to having suicidal thoughts.”
Two DSC students, Kaylee Curtis and Sydney Croteau, said they have heard of Project SPEAK but had no idea how to avail themselves of the services the project offers. These students both admitted that they are in need of mental health help. Curtis and Croteau said that they are not the only ones.
Curtis and Croteau are both residential students and shared that groups of students in the dorms often get together for “crying sessions” due to how overwhelmed they are by anxiety and depression.
Curtis said that when she was researching Project SPEAK what stood out to her was that it seemed to be “by the people, for the people” which intrigued her. “We should be able to oversee our own healthcare, whether physical or mental,” Curtis said. Both students seemed to advocate for more information being presented around campus about Project SPEAK.
The Falcon Hope Center hosted an event called Jumpstart on August 24, which was a kick-off to the beginning of the Fall semester. There was free food, a Hope Center Tour, and free school supplies for those students who needed them. Bethany Session of Project SPEAK was on hand to discuss the project and had literature about the resources that are available to DSC students.