FORT WAYNE, Ind.—The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awarded a three-year, $306,000 grant to the University of Saint Francis for development of its Cougars Promoting Mental Health (CPMH) program.
The program will provide the university’s undergraduate students with services that promote mental health and address substance use disorder (SUD) issues, with a goal of preventing suicide. The program will especially focus on the 32% of the student body who are student-athletes.
“The University of Saint Francis is grateful for the SAMHSA grant because of the enormous positive effect this will have on our students,” Saint Francis President Dr. Lance Richey said. “Many students today deal with challenges and stressful situations and need quality, professional help to guide them. The Cougars Promoting Mental Health program will provide a valuable and needed resource.”
The grant will allow Saint Francis to expand mental health services, including counseling and group sessions, establish outreach activities and public education campaigns and provide training for students, staff and faculty to identify and respond to students with mental health or SUD challenges.
Saint Francis plans to coordinate with community partners to develop crisis response protocols and program referral mechanisms for students at risk for suicide, depression, mental illness or SUDs. In addition, the university seeks to increase its capacity for providing services to those students, improve its identification of students who are in need and increase student awareness of available resources and support.
Founded in 1890 in the Catholic Franciscan tradition, the University of Saint Francis offers more than 60 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs through the College of Health Sciences and the College of Arts, Sciences, and Business. In addition to its traditional programs, Saint Francis designs focused curricula for working adults in Fort Wayne, Crown Point and online. USF Downtown houses the music technology program while offering enhanced internship and networking opportunities for students. The University of Saint Francis, recognized as an NAIA Five-Star Champion of Character institution, has 20 athletic programs boasting two individual and four team NAIA national championships. Approximately 1,800 students from a broad geographic region attend Saint Francis.