Prevent 2 Protect project underway at Michigan State

(CBS DETROIT) – Prevent to protect. That’s the idea behind the adolescent targeted violence prevention program at Michigan State University.

CBS Detroit exclusively previewed the project Wednesday. It’s a Michigan-based initiative at MSU’s Department of Psychiatry that will pair both a mental health mentor and an advocate with children with homicidal ideations. The goal is to intervene with children struggling with mental health issues before they progress to the point of committing a mass shooting. Organizers have a lot of faith in the program.

“Much of what you’re going to hear about today is the culmination of a lot of work a lot of research ongoing research. Not only about the phenomena of violence not going to phenomena of school violence. But how do we stop it? And what do we do to prevent these attacks?” said Dr. Frank Straub, the co-director of the project. “And we think and unfortunately the state of Michigan has just given us incredible support as has Michigan State University. We think we may have something that’s going to work and we can save lives we can prevent shooting.”

Prevent to Protect is operating in partnership with the Safe and Sound Schools initiative. It has been made possible by the Michigan Department of Education. 

Learning from the woman who experienced tragedy first hand, Michigan State University kicked off it’s Prevent 2 Protect project Thursday with remarks from a mother of a student killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Michele Gay’s daughter, Josephine, was shot and killed that day. Since then, Gay has helped start the Safe and Sound Schools Initiative, which aims to support school crisis prevention, response, and recovery so that students can learn safely. The initiative has partnered with MSU’s project. 

Gay spoke Thursday about findings that suggest her daughter’s murder could have been prevented if the shooter had proper mental health intervention earlier. Because of that, she’s excited about the project.

“I believe so strongly in this work and this project that when we had a chance at safe and film schools to get behind it, it was an absolute and absolute yes,” Gay said. “Our whole team is thrilled and and I think you’ll see why as I share my presentation my perspective on prevention and it’s plural here in the in the title because what I’ll be sharing with you is is a combination of a lot of perspectives. Unfortunately around a very tragic and completed attack that affected my family very personally.”

Along with safe and sound schools, the MSU project is also being supported by the Michigan Department of Education. 

In attendance at MSU’s project launch were the three woman who have been guiding CBS Detroit through the chaos that is happening in the mental health system. The team of moms — Laura Marshall, Michelle Massey-Barnes, and Rachel Cuschieri-Murray — were able to listen to the details of the project in full. They have children with severe mental health issues and say a lot of the information shared on Thursday was both insightful, but triggering. Still, they’re going to keep hope alive.

“I believe if they can truly, effectively break the silos, yes because when these groups who spend time with our youth get to know them and can share information and find commonalities and then work together to support the families in supporting the youth, that’s what we’ve been asking for all along so yes, I absolutely feel like this could be tremendously effective for so many kids,” said Marshall.