Research finding · October 2026
Digital mental health engagement may expand suicide prevention on college campuses
College students experiencing depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts often face barriers to getting help, at times due to campus counseling centers struggling to meet growing demand. Digital mental health interventions could help expand access by offering interventions that are private, flexible, and available outside traditional therapy settings. These tools only help if students actually use them, and uptake and follow-through have often been low. Barriers can include stigma and negative attitudes about getting help, limited time, uncertainty about needing treatment, concerns about privacy, or simply not knowing whether an online program will be useful. Researchers are therefore examining whether digital mental health interventions can reduce distress, and how to make them easier for students with risk for suicide to start and continue using.
Dr. Jazmin Reyes-Portillo and colleagues used AFSP funding to develop Supporting Technology Engagement for Prevention (STEP), an intervention specifically designed to help college students with risk for suicide engage with digital mental health care. STEP was built using focus-group input from students and targeted the barriers they said mattered most, combining personalized feedback about symptoms and providing information about the value of online treatment, peer testimonials, an individualized intervention plan, brief human coaching, and motivational text reminders. In this initial open trial, 30 ethnoracially diverse college students, ages 18 to 29 with elevated levels of depression or anxiety and active suicidal ideation, received STEP alongside Therapist Assisted Online, an evidence-based digital intervention. Engagement was notably high: 93% completed at least one treatment session, 63% completed at least half of the program, and half completed 80% or more. Most students also reported being satisfied with the experience.
Over seven weeks, participants showed significant reductions in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, with the reduction in suicidal ideation emerging later in the intervention period. Because this was a small, uncontrolled pilot study, the findings cannot establish that STEP caused these improvements, but they suggest that designing digital care applying students’ own barriers and preferences may be a promising way to improve both access to and sustained engagement with suicide prevention support.
Citation: Reyes-Portillo, J. A., So, A., Judd, E., Lekas, H.-M., King, C., Uy, J., Karr, C., & Masia Warner, C. (2026). Supporting technology engagement for suicide prevention: An open trial with college students at-risk for suicide. Archives of Suicide Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2026.2713052
This finding comes from an AFSP-funded study — see the grant below ↓
