Findings

Learning From Experience

The Project Lift Up Team has been busy learning from the experiences that teens and young adults have shared. We are learning about participants’ own lived experiences with mental health concerns and their strengths. We are learning about the many ways participants have tried to support others and about the challenges and rewards of taking action. Click on the different topics below to see shareable infographics, abstracts and information about research papers we have published from Project Lift Up.

Explore Research By Topic:

Bystander Impact

Help Giving and Receiving

Measures

Participants talked about a variety of feelings about the helping they tried to do and what they thought about the impact of their actions.

Mitchell, K. J., Banyard, V., Cerel, J., & Colburn, D. (2026). Understanding the Impact of Exposure to Different Types of Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors. AJPM focus, 5(1), 100432.

Project Lift Up participants described a wide range of helping actions they tried to use in their social networks. We have both qualitative and quantitative findings about what helping looking like and young people's ideas about what is needed to help prevention programs be more effective.

Project Lift Up has developed new measures to study helping behaviors to prevent suicide. The project has also allowed us to test new models related to how helping happens. We are looking at variables within the individual (their attitudes) and the situation (peer norms, relationship to the person needing help, type of self-directed violence exposure).

Banyard V, Mitchell KJ, Jones LM, Dunsiger S, Ybarra ML. A Model of Bystander Helping to Prevent Suicide: Examining and Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior. J Interpers Violence. 2025 Dec;40(23-24):5605-5633. doi: 10.1177/08862605241303954. Epub 2024 Dec 23. PMID: 39716736; PMCID: PMC12183317.

Mental Health

Prevention

Social Determinants of Health

Participants discussed their own mental health struggles, including experiences with suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, or periods of significant emotional distress.

Study findings have highlighted several places where we can improve suicide prevention.

Participants discussed broader social and environmental factors, such as community context, resources, relationships, and structural conditions, and how these influence mental health and experiences of distress.

Mitchell KJ, Banyard V, Ybarra ML, Jones LM, Colburn D, Cerel J, Dunsiger S. Understanding Contagion of Suicidal Ideation: The Importance of Taking Into Account Social and Structural Determinants of Health. Mental Health Sci. 2025 Sep;3(3):10.1002/mhs2.70029. doi: 10.1002/mhs2.70029. Epub 2025 Jul 29. PMID: 40937304; PMCID: PMC12422207.

Mitchell KJ, Banyard V, Colburn D. The Contribution of Social and Structural Determinants of Health Deficits to Mental and Behavioral Health Among a Diverse Group of Young People. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2025 Jun 26;22(7):1013. doi: 10.3390/ijerph22071013. PMID: 40724080; PMCID: PMC12294719.

Social Media

Under-served Communities

Understanding Strengths

Participants discussed both the risks and benefits of technology and social media, including how online spaces can influence helping behaviors as well as shape or intensify their own experiences with suicidal thoughts and emotional distress.

Focuses on the importance of understanding the unique experiences and needs of marginalized groups, including sexual and gender minority youth, racial and ethnic minority populations, rural communities, low-income individuals, and individuals with disabilities, and how these factors can shape access to resources, support, and mental health outcomes.

Project Lift Up included many measures of strengths to add to our multidimensional understanding of resilience. The papers in this section look at a strengths-based approach to suicide prevention.