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Question, Persuade, Refer Training

You can play a crucial role in suicide prevention on campus by recognizing warning signs and helping students get the support they need.

Available to the Campus Community

QPR is available to students, faculty and staff. With segmented sections specifically for graduate students and options to dive deeper for all, there’s a QPR course for everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

According to national statistics:

  • 24,000 suicide attempts on college campuses occur per year nationwide
  • 1,100 completed college student suicides occur per year nationwide
  • Suicide is the second leading cause of death of college students

Prevention Services in collaboration with the Counseling Center and the Office of Risk Assessment offers QPR training. Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) training is a community-based, nationally recognized, and empirically grounded suicide prevention program for students, faculty, and staff.

It focuses on getting a distressed student or friend connected with additional support or referred for professional help. NC State has joined more than 160 colleges and universities in offering QPR.

QPR is intended to teach individuals who have contact with students (e.g., faculty, staff, friends) how to recognize the warning signs of suicide, including verbal, behavioral, and situational clues.

It provides guidelines on to how to question a person about suicidal thoughts, persuade them to get help and refer the person for help.

The QPR training is both educational and experiential and includes:

  • An overview of national, state, and NC State-specific statistics regarding suicide
  • Myths versus facts
  • Identifying behavioral, verbal, and situational warning signs
  • Practicing concrete tools for helping someone in distress

QPR can also be tailored to your specific group (athletes, ROTC, Fraternity and Sorority Life, etc.).

Our goal is to offer ongoing training options for the general NC State student community as well as continue to partner with campus groups for targeted training.

The program has been overwhelmingly well received. Some comments include:

  • “I feel like I now know where to refer students in need or how to contact someone for assistance if needed.”
  • “This training is great and very informative! I will use this when interacting with students whom I am concerned will hurt themselves. I feel I have acquired better skills for working with students going through these issues.”
  • “I see myself using these skills in my personal life and in my role as a university staff member.”
  • “This training helps take away my fears of dealing with difficult situations.”
  • “The techniques for convincing someone to seek help were great!”

We schedule frequent QPR trainings throughout the term. Register online through Reporter.

If you have any difficulties or questions, please contact Emily Anderson.

If you are interested in QPR training for your work department or student group, please fill out this form.

We request that you schedule a training at least two weeks in advance. We will do our best to accommodate your specific requests and arrange for one of our QPR trained staff to provide the training for your group.

In-Person Trainings

Virtual Trainings