our minds matter

Our Minds Matter is proud to ground our work in the latest research. But how do we know, with confidence, that our program works? The answer lives in the data and evidence. We are constantly gathering data and evidence, by conducting research into our own work, to ensure our programming applies the best practices of suicide prevention research in the most impactful and effective way. 

Behind every data point is a teen, a community, a life, and a valuable story. We see measurement and evaluation as an ethical obligation to ensure our programs are designed, delivered, assessed, and sustained to maximize the benefit of our program for the teens we serve.

Each year, we conduct a thorough program evaluation to deepen our understanding about the impact of the OMM model. We collect quantitative and qualitative data from teens, student leaders, and adult sponsors, and use it to evaluate the extent to which OMM meets its objectives, as well as for internal data-informed decision-making.

Recent Evidence of Impact

The power of data lives in the story it tells. Here are some highlights from our latest findings, based on our analysis of our 2022-23 End-of-Year Survey (i.e. “Exit Poll”):

• 81.5% of students reported feeling socially connected to their fellow OMM club members – one of key factors for preventing suicide! 
• 87.7% reported being in Our Minds Matter has had a positive impact on their mental health 
• 86.7% of students reported feeling confident in their ability to support a peer who is struggling with mental health
• 85.8% were willing to seek help if they themselves are struggling
• Students’ sense of social connectedness, positive coping skills, willingness to seek help, awareness of mental health resources, and subjective well-being increased from Fall to Spring as a result of their involvement with OMM
• Students who held leadership roles within their OMM clubs scored higher than their non-leader club peers on social connectedness, use of positive coping skills, and positive impact on mental health. This is likely due to students feeling empowered as a leader and changemaker
• BIPOC students did not differ significantly from white students on program outcomes except for willingness to seek help, which may be related to cultural-specific mental health stigma and historical distrust of the health care system
• The more school-wide campaigns organized by an OMM club, the fewer students viewed mental health topics as stigmatized at their school
• There is a positive connection between the number of club meetings attended and students’ level of social connectedness. Social connectedness, in turn, was connected to improvements in other areas, such as positive well-being, help-seeking, prosocial behavior, and positive coping and healthy habits. In other words, the more OMM meetings one attends, the more socially connected they feel with their peers, which leads to higher scores on other mental health markers. 

This groundbreaking finding helps illustrate the mechanism behind how the OMM program works and confirms our theory of change.

Want to learn more about our findings? Access the full 2022-23 End-of-Year Program Evaluation Report here:

• High School Program
• Middle School Program

Please email our Director of Impact, G Wei Ng, Ph.D., with any questions regarding OMM program evaluation or research.

Our goal is to establish OMM as a certified, best practice evidence-based program. To this end, we are invested in developing productive partnerships with external researchers to yield independent research outputs and contribute to the broader scientific community.

Since 2021, we have partnered with Dr Jordan Booker from the University of Missouri to research the use of peer-support models in youth suicide prevention programming. Dr. Booker received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Virginia Tech and completed postdoctoral training at Emory University. His research spans topics of emotion, personality, and identity development across adolescence and into early adulthood. He often incorporates autobiographical and family storytelling methodologies to address how people manage emotions, express personality, and build an integrated identity.

You can read Dr. Booker’s latest findings here: 2022-2023 IRB Outcome Evaluation Study

future direction

In the coming year, we are expanding this research to measure the mental and social health outcomes of students at OMM schools compared with those at non-OMM schools in the same district. This study, with rigorous research design, will contribute to the body of evidence supporting upstream, school-based peer-led models for youth suicide prevention. And it will offer deeper insight into how OMM clubs help change school cultures around mental health to improve mental well-being for all.

research spotlight

OMM proudly presented our poster at the 2023 Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health in New Orleans! Read more and learn about our interesting findings here…