An escape game where the friends of a victim of suicide must find out how signs of mental illness went unnoticed; a series of cards with hopeful messages; a game of myths and realities about suicide. These projects, and many more, were presented by 2nd year Bachelor of Psychology students on the 16th of October to promote suicide prevention and awareness.

These exhibitions mark the end of a two-phase project conducted over the year-long Adult Psychopathology module. In the first phase, students researched the topic and developed project proposals. In the second, they followed through on these ideas and presented their final results to the public.

“For this Project, we aimed for 2nd year students learning about mental illness to recognize that they are health practitioners beyond the clinic or the hospital. This act of prevention has the potential to reach many people, and is a topic that is far from resolved in our country, as evident in statistics.”, expressed professor María Alcira Frontini.

Speaking up
Students all agreed on this point. For example, Camila Ayala mentioned that “these actions are very important to shed some light on this topic, speak about suicide, which is a taboo subject, speak about mental health, and in this way raise awareness and promote prevention. Her initiative, called “Punto y coma”, proposes a mental health space for a high school that provides specific information directed at teenagers.

“In the theoretical phase of the project we had to learn how to do a task of this style of both work and research. I learned a lot, from what is the rate of suicide, to what the indicative signals are, or what pathologies are the most prevalent. Then came the stage of thinking what we could do. Because we’re students, but we’re also people with mental health, and from our position we can do something to improve the situation. We learned so much.”, recounted the student. When speaking to people who visited her display, Ayala felt the value of her work and satisfaction with how people learned and took photos of her posters. “We are doing something that has impact, and is teaching me a lot.”, she reflected.

Reasons to live, formation and immersion
The project that received the best feedback was “A million reasons to live” for its approach, theoretical foundations, and choice of medium. On the day of the event, this group presented a panel with different reasons and invited the audience to participate by using string to physically connect themselves to others involved.

Another group came up with a game - “detective in prevention”- with case studies to distinguish signals of risk of suicide and discuss them.

The “Travelers” invited their audience to cover their eyes and put on headphones to listen to the thoughts of Martín, a 22-year-old with depression, and simulate taking charge of his situation. Another team proposed a series of letters that would have been valuable to read before committing suicide. This action seeked to give a positive connotation to elements typically associated with the ending of one’s life, as it proposed empathetic messages to those who struggled with this risk.

Not missing either were games of question and answer, or myth and reality, dedicated to promoting dialogue and supporting prevention. “Fresh ideas sometimes help a lot to dispel the hopelessness of thinking one cannot do anything about this issue”, said Dr Frontini, who led her 32 students to reflect on the impact of their actions on society, and on their own surroundings.