LivingWorks Start – our 90-minute, online suicide prevention training program – is empowering communities to take action and help create a suicide-safer world. In one Colorado district, tragedy struck when multiple students died by suicide in the same school year. Heartbroken and determined to make a difference, the district knew they needed to act. The goal was clear: to equip the community with the knowledge and skills to help prevent future loss.
“We had lost a number of students to suicide in a short amount of time. Honestly, you’re really trying to gasp for air,” says Jon Widmier, Mental Health Coordinator for Littleton Public Schools in Colorado. “We realized there is a basic set of skills that every adult in our district needs. We were asking a few people to try and solve everything.”
There are 23 schools throughout the district, supporting between 10,000-12,000 students. While the district has always mandated LivingWorks ASIST training for its mental health staff, it was recognized that true suicide prevention required a broader approach – one that engaged the entire community to keep students safer.
“Suicide prevention is everybody’s business. If you leave it just for the mental health professionals or administrators in your building, it’s an unfair burden. What we need is for everybody to see the signs,” says Widmier. “I came across LivingWorks Start and took the training… there was something about LivingWorks Start that grabs you and makes you pay attention. The interactive nature of it makes it really engaging.”
After seeing the impact of the suicide prevention skills taught in LivingWorks Start, Widmier took the initiative to expand the training district-wide, ensuring more people had the tools to help.
“We had every single person working in the school district take the program. From our school board members to our bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers, every single person in the district was assigned the training and took it. That ended up being about 1,200 people,” says Widmier.
Widmier and his team were intentional about how they introduced LivingWorks Start training to staff – ensuring the messaging was clear and supportive. They emphasized that no one was expected to be a mental health professional – but by learning these skills, staff could gain the confidence to recognize when someone may be thinking about suicide and connect them to the right support.
LivingWorks training has now become a key component in the Littleton Public School district’s comprehensive suicide prevention plan.
“What we’ve noticed is our suicide deaths have gone down – what we’ve seen grow is the number of students we’re talking to. We’re talking to them earlier in the process, and when we do a suicide risk intervention, we have an extremely high percentage chance of keeping that student alive,” says Widmier.
Every teacher in the Littleton Public Schools district has completed LivingWorks Start, and the training is a now a key part of the onboarding process for all new hires. Widmier believes its impact goes beyond the classroom – extending into the broader community, where these skills can help create a Network of Safety and support.
“We put LivingWorks Start in place for the safety of the students. The secondary benefit is for the adults as well. Educators are quick to focus on what can help the kids, but we have to realize this is also for us – for the people to your left and right,” says Widmier.
For other communities looking to create safer spaces from suicide, Widmier emphasizes there is no better time than now to equip people with the skills to support one another and help save lives.
“We all need it. If your community isn’t going through something hard right now, it’s very realistic you could be soon. I would encourage people to act now. When you’re in a crisis, you’re just trying to survive. If you can put the structures and safety measures like training in place ahead of time, you are going to be so grateful for the investment you make when you go through something difficult,” says Widmier.
