State agencies and private sector launch effort to reduce suicide

T3-Time to Talk is a collaborative suicide prevention initiative launched in Oklahoma in 2013, designed to reduce the number of suicides and suicide attempts among school-aged children and young adults. The program is built around the principle that open conversation about mental health and suicidal ideation — removing the stigma that often prevents people from seeking help or reaching out to those they are worried about — is one of the most effective preventive tools available. The name itself communicates the program's core message: that making time to talk, to listen, and to connect is a potentially life-saving act that any person can perform.

The initiative was launched as a pilot program in four Oklahoma school districts — Edmond, Moore, Putnam City, and Mid-Del — with a curriculum designed to be delivered in public schools at age-appropriate levels for elementary, middle, and high school students. The curriculum focuses on two complementary objectives: teaching students to recognize the warning signs of suicidal crisis in themselves and in peers, and building the personal resilience skills that help young people cope with the stresses and setbacks that can contribute to suicidal ideation. By addressing both the crisis recognition and the upstream resilience dimensions of the problem, the curriculum takes a comprehensive approach to prevention.

The program's public launch at a Southmoore Sabercats versus Carl Albert Titans football game in Moore, Oklahoma, reflected a deliberate strategy of reaching young people in a setting that is central to their social world. Players from both teams wore neon green socks, towels, and wristbands bearing the T3-Time to Talk logo, using the visibility of high school athletics to signal that suicide prevention is a cause that student-athletes and their communities embrace publicly and without embarrassment. This normalization strategy aimed to counteract the silence and shame that too often surrounds conversations about mental health among young people.

The goals set for the program were ambitious: by 2018, reduce suicides and suicide attempts among Oklahoma youth by 50 percent and substantially increase public awareness of suicide prevention resources. These targets reflected both the severity of the problem — 178 Oklahomans under the age of 30 had taken their own lives in the year preceding the initiative's launch — and the confidence of the program's partners that a well-designed, broadly implemented prevention curriculum could produce measurable reductions in these tragic outcomes. State officials planned to expand the pilot to every school district in Oklahoma if the initial results supported that investment.

The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, known by its acronym ODMHSAS, is the state agency responsible for planning, developing, and implementing policies and programs related to mental health and substance use disorder treatment and prevention throughout Oklahoma. The agency operates and funds a network of community mental health centers and treatment facilities across the state, provides grants and contracts to private nonprofit providers, establishes standards for treatment and prevention services, and advocates for the needs of Oklahomans affected by mental illness and addiction within state government and the broader public policy arena.

Commissioner Terri White led ODMHSAS at the time of the T3-Time to Talk launch, and the agency played a central role in bringing the initiative to life. White noted at the launch that the state had invested additional resources in suicide prevention, with Governor Mary Fallin championing the funding during the preceding legislative session. "Partnership is the key, and this program is a great step in the right direction," White said, articulating the collaborative philosophy that underpinned the T3 initiative's design. The agency's involvement ensured that the school-based curriculum was grounded in evidence-based prevention science and connected to the broader mental health service infrastructure that students who need help would access.

ODMHSAS's participation in the T3-Time to Talk initiative also reflects the agency's broader mandate to address the mental health needs of all Oklahomans, including those in educational settings who are at elevated risk for a range of mental health challenges. Schools represent a critical intervention point for mental health because they are where young people spend the majority of their time and where the warning signs of emerging mental health problems are most likely to be observed by trained adults. By partnering with the Oklahoma Department of Education and school districts to deliver prevention curriculum, ODMHSAS extended its reach into an important setting it does not typically regulate or fund directly.

The department's engagement with the National Guard on this initiative reflects an understanding that the military and mental health communities share a significant constituency. National Guard soldiers and veterans are at elevated risk for mental health challenges including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and their families — including their children — also experience elevated rates of stress-related difficulties. By partnering with the Guard on a youth-focused prevention program, ODMHSAS created an opportunity to simultaneously serve the broader population of at-risk youth and the military-connected community that the Guard serves directly.

Youth mental health in Oklahoma reflects both national trends in adolescent wellbeing and specific state-level factors that make the problem particularly acute. National research has consistently documented increasing rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among American adolescents over the past two decades, driven by factors including social media use, academic pressure, economic insecurity, and reduced access to mental health care. Oklahoma has been particularly affected by these trends, with mental health outcomes that rank among the most challenging in the nation due to a combination of rural isolation, poverty, limited access to mental health services, and a cultural tendency to minimize or stigmatize mental health concerns.

State Superintendent of Education Janet Barresi articulated the problem with clear-eyed directness at the T3-Time to Talk launch: "In recent years, we've had heartbreaking news accounts of school-aged children committing suicide." Her willingness to name the problem directly in a public forum reflected the kind of destigmatizing leadership that the T3 initiative was designed to model and encourage. When the state's chief education official says plainly that children are dying by suicide and that this must change, it sends a powerful message to school administrators, teachers, parents, and students themselves that mental health is a legitimate and urgent public priority.

The statistic that 178 Oklahomans under the age of 30 had taken their own lives in the year preceding the T3 launch provided the quantitative foundation for the program's sense of urgency. Behind each of those 178 deaths was a young person whose life held promise and potential, and a family devastated by a loss that is both incomprehensible and, in many cases, preventable. Prevention programs like T3-Time to Talk are premised on the evidence-based understanding that suicide is not an inevitable outcome of mental illness or distress, but that timely intervention, connection, and access to care can change the trajectory for individuals who are at risk.

The particular attention to military families in the T3 initiative recognizes that children of deployed or recently returned soldiers face elevated stress compared to their civilian peers. Worry about a parent's safety, the disruption of a parent's absence, and the emotional and behavioral changes that can accompany a returning soldier's readjustment to home life all create conditions that can exacerbate the mental health vulnerabilities that any adolescent may face. Programs that address youth mental health in partnership with the Guard are therefore serving both the general population of at-risk youth and the specific military-connected community that the Guard is institutionally committed to supporting.

The Oklahoma National Guard's involvement in community health initiatives like T3-Time to Talk reflects an evolution in the Guard's understanding of its responsibilities to the state it serves. Traditionally conceived as a military force available for both state emergencies and federal military deployments, the Guard has increasingly recognized that its connections to communities throughout Oklahoma, its organizational capacity, and its credibility as a trusted civic institution give it a unique ability to mobilize support for important community causes. Mental health and suicide prevention represent an area where the Guard's own institutional experience — managing the mental health challenges of soldiers returning from combat deployments — intersects powerfully with broader community needs.

Maj. Gen. Myles Deering's personal leadership of the T3 initiative demonstrated the importance of senior leadership commitment in making cross-sector partnerships work. Deering's statement that "we have way too many young people, some of them very young, who are taking their own lives" and his belief that "working together, we can make a difference" set a tone of urgency and optimism that helped galvanize the diverse partners needed to make the program successful. When the state's top military officer speaks publicly about youth suicide prevention, it signals to other community leaders that this is a cause worthy of their own engagement and resources.

The Guard's role also extended beyond leadership and convening to the practical work of connecting military-affiliated families to the prevention curriculum and services being offered through the T3 initiative. Guard families, including the children of soldiers who had deployed multiple times and were managing the accumulated stress of years of service-related disruption, were a priority population for the program. The Guard's family readiness infrastructure, which maintains contact with families throughout the deployment cycle, provided a channel for reaching these families with information about the T3 program and encouraging their participation.

The involvement of Gerry Shepherd, CEO of Oklahoma Roofing and Sheet Metal, as a corporate partner in the T3 initiative illustrates how the Guard's community relationships can mobilize private sector support for public health goals. Shepherd noted that his investigation of the suicide problem had led him to discover that it "went far deeper" than he had initially realized — not just a problem among soldiers, but also "an issue affecting way too many school-aged kids." His willingness to direct corporate resources toward a community health cause reflects the kind of civic leadership that the Guard's community partnerships can catalyze, leveraging military credibility and relationships to engage stakeholders who might not otherwise connect their resources to a public health priority.

Effective school-based suicide prevention requires a comprehensive approach that addresses multiple levels of the problem simultaneously — the individual student who may be at risk, the peers and adults who interact with that student daily, and the broader school and community environment that either supports or undermines mental health. Evidence-based programs like the T3-Time to Talk curriculum are designed to work across all these levels, providing students with knowledge about mental health and suicidal crisis, giving them the language and confidence to talk about these subjects with peers and trusted adults, and building the resilience skills that help them manage the stresses that contribute to risk.

Teacher and counselor training is a critical component of any effective school-based prevention strategy. Adults who work with students every day are often the first to notice behavioral changes, declining academic performance, social withdrawal, or other warning signs that a student may be struggling. When those adults have been trained to recognize these warning signs, know how to initiate a supportive conversation with a student they are concerned about, and understand the referral pathways available for students who need professional assessment or intervention, they become a powerful early warning and intervention system that operates naturally within the existing school environment.

Parental and community engagement amplifies the impact of school-based prevention programs by extending the conversation about mental health beyond the classroom into homes and community spaces. When parents understand the warning signs of suicidal crisis and know how to talk about mental health with their children in ways that invite rather than close down conversation, they reinforce the messages students receive at school. Community organizations, faith communities, and civic groups can provide additional layers of support and connection that build the social fabric of care on which individuals in crisis depend. No single institution can address the full complexity of youth suicide prevention alone; it requires the coordinated effort of many community systems working together.

The T3 initiative's goal of expanding to every school district in Oklahoma, if the pilot results supported that investment, reflected an understanding that the problem is statewide and that the solution must be as well. Mental health challenges and suicidal risk do not respect district or county lines, and a prevention infrastructure that covers only a fraction of the state's students leaves many of the most vulnerable young people without access to the knowledge and skills that could protect them. Statewide expansion requires sustained political will, ongoing funding, and continued partnership between state agencies, school systems, and community organizations — exactly the kind of collaborative commitment that the T3 initiative was designed to model and sustain.