Hoosier Girls are NOT ok!

Hoosier girls are not okay. 

That’s the word from the 2023 Indiana Girl Report, a joint initiative of the Indiana Youth Institute and the Girl Coalition of Indiana. Girls are not okay. 

As the Indiana Center for Prevention of Youth Abuse & Suicide (ICPYAS) moves into 2024, we are thinking about girls. 

According to the report, “among 7th to 12th grade girls in Indiana, 47.1% experienced depression in 2022 and nearly 1 in 4 girls seriously considered suicide. Of these, more than 6,000 girls in high school moved beyond considering suicide and actively began to think about how they would carry it out.” 

ICPYAS is part of the solution by bringing Signs of Suicide (SOS) programming to Central Indiana schools and youth organizations.  

SOS is an evidence-based youth suicide prevention program that has demonstrated an improvement in students’ knowledge and adaptive attitudes about suicide risk and depression. 

Designed for grades 6-12, SOS teaches students how to identify signs of depression and suicide in themselves and their peers, while providing materials that train school professionals, parents, and communities to recognize at-risk students and take appropriate action.