Campaigns & Culture

Raising our Culture’s Understanding

Raising our culture’s understanding of mental health and suicide prevention is a vital part of saving lives and ensuring our friends, neighbors, coworkers and family members feel empowered to look out for the people in their lives, and care for their own mental health. Through national campaigns, social media, public relations, popular entertainment and more, AFSP inspires our society to become more proactive in making a difference.

Shaping Narratives, Encouraging Ethical Reporting, and Inspiring Conversation

We continued providing confidential, bespoke consultation for the entertainment industry on safe storytelling and messaging for TV shows, films, podcasts, literature, and musicians through relationships including Netflix, Paramount/MTV, Amazon MGM, This American Life, Image Comics, and Warner Bros. Discovery, which aired AFSP’s Talk Away the Dark PSA film in support of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Our partnership with rock band Papa Roach grew this past year through the hit Carrie Underwood duet version of Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark), AFSP chapter tabling throughout their tour, and an emotional onstage moment devoted to AFSP and suicide prevention.

AFSP also launched its Ethical Reporting Advisory Committee: a group of journalists lending their expertise to help steer AFSP’s ethical reporting and messaging on suicide. Members serve as ambassadors of ethical reporting for AFSP, joining us in creating and spreading education on this topic, and creating mental health stories that model these standards. This past year, AFSP presented its education program Ethical Reporting Saves Lives to NBC Universal, the National Hispanic Journalists Association, and the National Gay and Lesbian Journalist Association.

This past year, AFSP’s experts were featured in over 40 news stories, on topics including suicide in the military, the debate on terminology such as “unalived,” the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, youth mental health, AI therapists, and more. The top 15 stories were seen by an estimated 950K people across media sites where the stories were featured.

Promoting Resilience and Connection in May, September, and Throughout the Year

Suicide prevention is important every day of the year. But May and September — Mental Health Awareness Month and Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — offer opportunities to capture the public’s interest through campaigns that draw attention to our cause, providing hope, resources, and calls to action. Our May campaign, In This Together: Building Emotional Resilience in Ourselves and Our Communities, offered the public game-changing strategies we can take to encourage our personal and collective resilience, while our September campaign, Looking Out for Each Other, brought people together through the Out of the Darkness Walks and local chapters.

Our Seize the Awkward Campaign, in partnership with the Ad Council and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), continued to inspire young people to check in on their friends, providing them with practical suggestions on how to do so.

Reaching Diverse Audiences Through
Research and Shared Cultural Understanding

This year, AFSP launched The Upright — a collection of AFSP’s resources including research, programs, and policy — that aims to advance health equity in suicide prevention. The Upright is a part of AFSP’s commitment to support communities with disproportionate impacts related to suicide. Research tells us that developing suicide prevention strategies for underrepresented individuals must be anchored with the understanding that communities have unique lived experiences and need to see their experiences and identities reflected in resources.

To further deepen conversations around people’s shared experience, we also worked with Hueman Group Media to launch the AFSP Podcast Channel, the official home for three unique series focused on mental health, suicide prevention, and health equity:

Strong Talk, hosted by Vic Armstrong, AFSP’s vice president for health equity and engagement, featuring in-depth conversations with mental health experts, advocates, and leaders about the challenges and solutions to making mental health care accessible to all.

Ask Dr. Jill, hosted by Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, AFSP’s senior vice president of research, answering real mental health questions with the latest scientific research and help from fellow experts in the field.

Elevating Voices, a roundtable discussion series, hosted by Vic Armstrong, and other AFSP leaders and clinical experts, bringing together members of diverse communities to uncover the unique mental health challenges they face, and discuss strategies for solving them.