Office of Student Life
Counseling and Consultation Service

Accreditation

The Ohio State University is a JED Campus

The Jed Foundation (JED) is a nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults. In 2013, The Ohio State University was honored as one of the inaugural recipients of the JED Campus Seal, which recognizes schools for their comprehensive approaches to student mental health promotion and suicide prevention. In 2018, Ohio State partnered with JED Campus, a nationwide initiative to facilitate a school's ability to assess and enhance their mental health support system from a campus-wide perspective. Chaired by leaders from Counseling and Consultation Service (CCS), the university convened a multi-disciplinary team of campus partners to begin this endeavor. The four-year JED Campus program consisted of: a detailed self-assessment of policies and programs related to mental health promotion and suicide and substance misuse prevention at Ohio State; a site visit including a student focus group; a comprehensive feedback report that was provided to the Suicide and Mental Health Task Force Implementation Team in October of 2019; a mental health strategic plan with objectives and action items; annual survey data related to identifying students at risk, utilization of mental health and substance misuse services, and academic data provided to JED; a post-assessment to evaluate change during the program; and two administrations of the Healthy Minds Survey to several thousand Ohio State students, with the second administration occurring spring 2023. After successfully completing the four-year process, Ohio State joined nearly 200 other campuses as a JED Campus alumni institution in 2023.

REACH® Named a National Best Practice by the SPRC

REACH®, the Suicide Prevention Gatekeeper Training Program that has been used by The OSU Suicide Prevention Program since 2011, has been recognized by the federal government as a National Best Practice. In August of 2026, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) added REACH to the National Best Practice Registry (https://sprc.org/bpr). Programs in the registry must have strong evidence of effectiveness, and they undergo rigorous review by three national review bodies. REACH is one of fewer than ten suicide prevention gatekeeper programs in the Best Practice Registry. This national recognition underscores the more than 15 years of work at OSU and other locations, that has been done using REACH to save lives.  

REACH has been provided to other members of the OSU community, by hundreds of student, faculty, and staff trainers. Research at Ohio State demonstrates that after receiving a REACH training, participants:

  • were nearly 40% more likely to demonstrate knowledge about suicide (roughly two-thirds before the training to more than nine in ten afterward)

  • were almost twice as likely to have the skills to reach out and ask about suicide (fewer than half had these skills before the training to more than 95% afterward)

  • were nearly two and a half times more likely to know OSU and other resources to help those they were concerned about (moving from about 40% before the training to nearly 95% after the training).

To learn more about REACH, visit https://REACHSuicidePrevention.org 

To learn how to implement REACH for your OSU student organization, class, or office, visit https://suicideprevention.osu.edu 

International Accreditation of Counseling Services (IACS)

Counseling and Consultation Service is fully accredited by the International Accreditation of Counseling Services (IACS), which specifically focuses on accrediting professional counseling centers on higher education campuses.  IACS provides guidance and advocacy to improve and strengthen the quality of mental health care in higher education to ensure all students have access to having their needs met.  IACS accreditation also ensures that counseling centers have appropriately qualified staff while also ensuring that students have a variety of services to access.  IACS also prioritizes confidentiality and administrative neutrality from academics and student life to ensure students feel comfortable in accessing care. 

American Psychological Association (APA)

The Doctoral Internship in Psychology at CCS has been accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) since 1978. It is one of the longest running accredited programs in the country. The American Psychological Association runs the Commission on Accreditation, which accredits doctoral graduate degrees, doctoral-level internships, and postdoctoral programs in psychology. The ultimate goal of APA accreditation is to graduate psychologists who are uniquely qualified to protect the wellbeing of the public by providing quality psychological service.