Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide

Overview

The Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide, Inc. (SPTS) is a 501(c)3 public charity, incorporated on January 18, 2005.  The organization was founded by two Monmouth County, New Jersey fathers who each experienced the devastating loss of a teenage child by suicide.  The mission of SPTS is to reduce the number of youth suicides and attempted suicides by encouraging public awareness through the development and promotion of educational training programs.

For over a decade, SPTS has provided assistance to communities in need, most specifically to educators, parents and teens.  SPTS was instrumental in the passage of legislation in New Jersey in 2006 requiring public educators to have a minimum of two hours of suicide prevention training every professional development period.  SPTS developed a free, best practices, online training program for educators; published the Lifelines Trilogy, an Evidence-based, best practices, whole-school suicide prevention program; and produced Not My Kid: What Every Parent Should Know, a best practices video for parents to increase awareness and knowledge about youth suicide.  SPTS offers a variety of prevention training programs and presentations such as: Making Educators Partners in Youth Suicide Prevention, Making Youth Agencies Partners in Youth Suicide Prevention, Raising Resilient Teens in Challenging Times, and the Role of the Trusted Adult. SPTS has routinely worked with states in developing community coalitions, implementing the Lifelines curriculum, enhancing community support and preparing districts for an organized response to traumatic events.  SPTS has presented in-person to over 15,000 educators, parents and students across more than half the country, trained nearly 300,000 educators through its online training program, and its parent video has been viewed online over 60,000 times.  Annually, it is estimated that SPTS directly serves 236,000 individuals.  Though statistics are not able to report the number of lives directly saved by the efforts of our organization, it is estimated that over 6.8 million youth have been potentially impacted as a result of training and resources made readily available by SPTS.  SPTS is dedicated to providing valuable training, consultation and resources to communities to help save the lives of teens.

Duties

• The only requirement is that the student must take our online training - Making Educators Partners in Youth Suicide Prevention to learn vernacular and concepts that are used in the office regularly.  This training is online and free of cost. Also, this is done on the first day of the internship, so it's not before.

Requirements

• The intern will have the ability to provide input based on previous experience and interest categories to create the most valuable experience for student and organization. Projects may include public relations, programmatic support, fundraising, and event planning.  Duties may include: research, data entry, preparation of promotional materials for trainings and support for events both programmatic and fundraising.

How to Apply

Kelly Coulson Perrini

Director of Operations

Office: (732) 410-7900 ext 103 kelly@sptsusa.org

Contact Information

Kelly Coulson Perrini

Director of Operations

Office: (732) 410-7900 ext 103 kelly@sptsusa.org

Student Feedback

The society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide is a wonderful place to intern at. The team is so friendly and personable. They provide thoughtful assignments that really make you think about how psychological principles are used. There are times when they may be slow with giving a workload, so they may give tedious tasks, but overall, I had an extremely positive experience interning there. I have never worked with a group of such kind, caring people who actually take the time to care about the work that they are giving you. The assignments never go to waste as they actually use the content you give them for emails and advertisements. During my time at SPTS, I did a lot of research finding suicide prevention coordinators, and adolescent mental health coordinators for every state. I made several different spreadsheets and even had an assignment where I had to find and contact CEO’s of digital behavioral health companies. These are just a few examples of the work that was given to me at my time at SPTS.I had a wonderful experience and would recommend this internship to anybody.

~Melissa Tignini, Fall '21

At my internship, I mostly worked alone on office-related tasks, such as stapling papers,

gathering and preparing promotional materials for presentations and events, creating folders and

bags for the Youth Wellness Summit event, proofreading and revising documents, researching

high schools, and creating Excel spreadsheets. Skills I practiced were improving on my

communication skills, improving on my Excel skills, and learning how to use office equipment.

The most enjoyable part about working here was that it was very rewarding to know that SPTS

plays a huge role in preventing youth suicides and attempted suicides and saves the lives of

families and teenagers from experiencing the trauma of suicide loss. For me, knowing that the

tedious tasks I was assigned were beneficial to help improve wellness and mental health among

teenagers was especially rewarding. The most not enjoyable part about working here was that

there was a lot of tension in the office and it was a stressful work environment at times. Before

working here, I thought the organization would consist of very calm, levelheaded, supportive,

compassionate, and personal people due to the organization’s mission to reduce youth suicides,

but not everyone in the office consisted of those qualities.

The type of student I feel would be the best fit for the site is someone who enjoys

working alone, completing tedious but simple tasks, and very patient, as sometimes the tasks can

be very long. Career wise, I would suggest this internship opportunity for someone who is

looking to work with a suicidal population or is interested in suicide prevention. Also, if

someone is looking to work in an educational setting, this would also be beneficial by learning

about suicide prevention through the online training courses. Personally, I would suggest

applying for an internship that coincides with a student’s career goals and where a student feels

comfortable working in a particular type of work environment.

~anonymous student

Have you interned here? Add your feedback to help other students by emailing [Goodwin].