LANSING — On a hot summer day, a woman working with a state suicide prevention program was approached by her neighbor who asked to share a drink on her porch, and for a foam sleeve — known as a Koozie – to keep it cold.

The woman grabbed the first foam sleeve she saw — branded to promote ManTherapy.org — and handed it to her neighbor. The two shared a drink and the neighbor went back home, Koozie in hand.

Later that night, University of Maryland researcher Jodi Frey recalled, the neighbor reached out and said, “I looked at the website on your Koozie. What are the next steps I do to get help?”

In 2022, 1,503 people in Michigan committed suicide, a slight increase from the previous two years according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Individuals 35 to 64 made up 60% of suicides that year, with men accounting for 78% of them, according to the Michigan Suicide Prevention Commision’s latest report.

Middle-aged men are at higher risk for several reasons, including economic stresses and the availability of lethal means like firearms, said Alison Arnold, the executive director of the Rural Health Equity Institute at Central Michigan University.

Men are also less likely to seek help due to social stigma, Arnold added.

In 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services launched its Preventing Suicide in Michigan Men program to address the increasing rate of suicide among middle-aged men.

The CDC-funded program, which was extended until 2025, aims to reduce suicide among men in the state by 10% through research and mental health services.

As part of the program, Arnold’s Rural Health Equity Institute created an online toolkit to connect medical providers with resources on how to address mental health problems among their patients.

Ensuring therapists and primary care physicians are well-equipped to ask about a patient’s mental health and provide the care they need, is particularly important amidst a shortage in behavioral health care providers, Arnold said.

“We’re equipping providers to have that conversation, to be comfortable having that conversation,” she said.

“You don’t have to be a behavioral health provider to begin asking patients who are struggling — or who you perceive are struggling — if they have been thinking about taking their life,” Arnold said.

The toolkit’s focus on providing resources to providers conducting “telehealth” or online health care services helps reach individuals who don’t live near a clinic while keeping costs low, Arnold said.

However, she added, inequities in broadband access in rural areas are an ongoing challenge for telehealth providers.

Although the institute’s toolbox is mostly geared toward health care providers, the website can also connect individuals to services like Man Therapy.

Frey, the associate dean of research at the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, has studied Man Therapy’s effectiveness since 2015.

The site — meant to target working-age men but accessible to anyone — allows users to access a preliminary “head inspection” to assess their mental health and connect them to resources in their community.

Frey’s study found that men who explored Man Therapy’s website were statistically more likely to seek out formal help such as discussing mental health with their doctor or arranging a therapy appointment.

As part of an ongoing follow-up study funded by the program, Frey said over 15,000 people in Michigan have visited the site, with approximately 40% of men between 25 and 64 years old indicating they’d seek additional resources.

Man Therapy’s online, 24/7 nature helps people in need whenever and wherever they are, Frey said.

“The last thing we want folks to do is get an answering machine or a message that someone’s not available when they might be in crisis,” Frey said.

Veterans are another group with high rates of suicide.

In 2021, the suicide rate for Michigan veterans was 31.1 per 100,000, compared to the general population’s rate of 18.1 per 100,000.

The Volunteers of America Michigan chapter has worked to lower those rates over the past three years through its Suicide Prevention Engagement & Referral for Veterans program, or SERV.

SERV connects veterans with one-on-one support from a specialist with shared mental health experiences, something organization President and CEO Aubrey Macfarlane said is crucial to its effectiveness.

“I can empathize with veterans all day, but I have not been trained to fight for our country. I’ve not been on the front lines,” she said.

“For these folks who fight so hard for our country, to have someone who is closer to the work and knows it, they can speak a different language to each other,” Macfarlane said.

The program — which served 78 people in its first year and has the capacity to serve 210 — is able to meet veterans wherever they are, be it at a staff office in their community or a public library.

The program serves 18 counties including Ingham, Clinton, Eaton, Macomb, Oakland, Wayne and Washtenaw.