Suicide Prevention Starts with Connection
September is Suicide Prevention Month, a time to raise awareness, encourage honest conversations, and remind people that help is available. It is also an opportunity to look beyond crisis response and consider how we can build communities where people feel connected, supported, and hopeful long before crisis occurs.
Suicide affects families and communities across Iowa. According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 548 Iowans died by suicide in 2024. Iowa’s age-adjusted suicide rate has increased by 48% over the past 20 years, which is 24.2 percentage points higher than the national average. Behind every number is a person, a family, a workplace, a school, and a community forever changed.
The encouraging message is that suicide is preventable, and we all have a role. Strengthening relationships, helping people meet basic needs, and connecting individuals with care are all part of prevention.
Preventing Suicide Before a Crisis
Suicide prevention includes responding when someone is in crisis, but it also begins much earlier. The CDC identifies supportive relationships, connection to others, coping skills, and access to quality healthcare as factors that can protect against suicide. These are strengths we can help build in our schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and community organizations.
Suicide prevention is strongest when communities work together to build supportive relationships, strengthen protective factors, address needs early, and make it easier for people to ask for and receive help.
For professionals and community members, this work can begin with everyday opportunities: checking in with a coworker, connecting a family with support, including someone who feels left out, or following up to make sure a referral led to the help someone needed.
Strengthening Protective Factors
The Strengthening Protective Factors Framework identifies five areas that help families navigate challenges and support healthy development. Although these protective factors were developed to strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect, they also support the emotional well-being of both children and adults, which in turn aids in suicide prevention.
1. Parental Resilience: The ability to manage stress, recover from challenges, and continue moving forward helps parents care for themselves and their families during difficult times.
2. Social Connections: Trusted friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, and community members can provide encouragement, practical help, and a sense of belonging.
3. Concrete Support in Times of Need: Access to food, housing, healthcare, transportation, childcare, and mental health services can reduce the overwhelming stress that may contribute to a crisis.
4. Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: Understanding children’s developmental stages helps parents set realistic expectations, recognize early signs of developmental delays, and respond with appropriate support. Knowing what to expect can also reduce some of the stress and uncertainty parents experience.
5. Social and Emotional Competence of Children: Helping children understand emotions, communicate their needs, and build healthy relationships gives them skills they can carry into adolescence and adulthood.
Professionals and community organizations can put these ideas into practice by supporting family support programs, making referrals easier, and listening to families about the barriers they face. When these protective factors are strong within the home, both parents and children are better equipped to manage challenges and reach out for help when they need it.
Creating Positive Childhood Experiences
Positive Childhood Experiences or PCEs, are another important part of supporting well-being early in life. Research has found that adults who report more positive childhood experiences also reported better mental health and stronger social support, even when they had experienced childhood adversity. These findings highlight the value of building positive experiences alongside efforts to prevent suicide.
These experiences include:
Being able to talk with family members about feelings
Knowing family members and by them during difficult times
Feeling safe and protected by an adult at home
Feeling a sense of belonging at school
Feeling supported by friends
Having at least two adults outside the home who take an interest in them
Enjoying participation in community traditions
Communities help create these experiences through mentoring programs, supportive schools, family programs, youth activities, faith communities, and community events. A business that supports employees’ involvement in mentoring, a school that helps every student feel included, or a community organization that removes participation fees are all contributing to creating positive childhood experiences. This work is connected to suicide prevention by strengthening belonging and supportive relationships, both which are recognized as protective factors against suicide. Every opportunity adds another layer of support around a child and family.
Building Hope
Hope is the belief that the future can be different than the past and that we have the ability to make it so. Putting hope into practice means helping people identify meaningful goals, explore possible pathways, and take manageable steps forward.
For professionals and community members, that might mean:
Listening to what matters to someone before offering solutions
Helping people recognize their strengths and past successes
Breaking large challenges into manageable steps
Exploring more than one pathway toward a goal
Addressing barriers that make progress difficult
Following up and acknowledging progress
Hope does not ignore pain or hardship. It helps people see that their current circumstances do not have to be the end of their story. Building hope gives us a practical way to support connection and problem-solving.
Preparing Community Members Through Question, Persuade, Refer
Even in supportive communities, people may experience a mental health crisis. That is why prevention must also include preparing people to recognize when someone may be at risk and respond appropriately.
Thriving Families Alliance will be offering a virtual QPR training on October 7th. This training teaches everyday community members how to recognize possible warning signs of suicide, ask someone directly if they are thinking about suicide, listen without judgment, and connect that person with help. QPR does not turn participants into mental health professionals, instead, it helps them become more prepared to notice, respond, and make a connection to life saving support.
Prevention Belongs to All of Us
Suicide prevention is not one program, training, or conversation. It is the combined work of strengthening families, creating positive experiences, building hope, increasing access to support, and preparing community members to respond when someone is struggling.
Schools, healthcare providers, workplaces, faith communities, service organizations, local leaders, and neighbors all have a role in suicide prevention. Together, we can help people feel supported, connected, and valued. We can also create communities where asking for help is viewed as a sign of strength.
This September, consider one step you and our organization can take. Support a mentoring program. Strengthen a referral partnership. Make mental health resources easier to find. Register for QPR training. Each action is an opportunity to make support more available in our communities.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for support.
 Preventing suicide begins long before someone is experiencing a crisis. By creating healthy environments for individuals, families, and communities, we can protect people from feeling suicidal in the first place. We can also lessen the community effects of suicides when they do happen, which can reduce risk among those who lost a loved one to suicide, and promote healing. |  Childhood experiences play an important role in shaping individuals’ well-being. In this study, we tested whether suicide cognitions and subjective happiness serially mediate the relationship between positive childhood experiences and mental well-being. |
'Hope Squad' teaches importance of suicide prevention, mental health awareness. | Family Focus: How Positive Childhood Experiences Affect Mental Health |
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