Children's Hospital of Orange County Mental Health

The Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) is a renowned pediatric healthcare system dedicated to providing the highest level of care for children. In early 2023, CHOC identified an urgent need to address a serious mental health issue: the rise of suicide among children and teens. Though early intervention has been proven to help prevent suicide, many parents don’t know how to recognize warning signs and/or are unsure of how to address it with their children when they see them. While a very sensitive topic to take on, the importance of the message could be life-saving. ​

With insights from CHOC and their mental health team, we developed a campaign to educate parents on the role of early intervention in suicide prevention. Knowing that parents and their kids are often uncomfortable having those talks, we wanted to empower parents with simple conversation starters that could help break the ice and approach the situation with a level of normalcy..​

Our campaign imagery portrays children with natural, unassuming expressions, conveying that signs of suicide may not always be readily visible. We also intentionally used portraits of younger children, to emphasize the insight that suicide ideation starts earlier than one might think. Messaging-wise, we wanted to be as clear and helpful as possible, providing parents with actual language to use when talking to their kids about suicide, followed by “did you know?”-type supporting copy to give them upfront information they could choose to learn more about.