Among people ages 10 to 24, Colleen Carpenter will tell you, suicide consistently ranks as the third or fourth most common cause of death.

That’s why, three years ago, it was a big deal when a little operation called Indiana Cares Youth Suicide Prevention Project won a $1.5 million, three-year federal grant to create suicide prevention programs.

Based at IPFW and operating under the university’s Behavioral Health & Family Studies Institute, Indiana Cares launched what would become Indiana’s only statewide suicide prevention resource center.

Carpenter became the project’s director and hired three staffers, along with two more at Purdue University Calumet. Over the course of three years, Indiana Cares made contact with 78,000 different people, trying to raise awareness of the problem and teaching people how to deal with troubled young people.

The project offered training and small grants to towns, churches, schools and other organizations trying to set up local suicide prevention programs.

In January 2011, though, when it came time to apply for a renewal of the grant, Carpenter and the entire IPFW project hit a snag.

The federal grant came from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Each state is allowed only one grant, and any agency that applies must have the blessing of its state division of mental health.

Last year, the state’s division of mental health decided it would apply for the grant itself, so it wouldn’t offer its blessing to Indiana Cares’ application.

What that meant for Indiana Cares was that there was no point in reapplying for the grant. Without the state advocating for it, Indiana Cares’ application wouldn’t even be considered by the federal agency.

Carpenter said she approached the state’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction, asking whether their two organizations could work together. After all, Indiana Cares had grown into the state’s largest – and only – statewide suicide prevention program.

The state agency was not interested in working with her, Carpenter said.

To Carpenter, the entire situation made no sense. Indiana Cares was already established. The state agency would essentially be trying to build a similar organization from the ground up. They’d be reinventing the wheel, she said.

Well, it appears there won’t be any reinventing of wheels, only disassembling of wheels. The Division of Mental Health and Addiction went ahead and applied for the federal grant – but its application was turned down. Now, no one will get funding, at least not in Indiana.

At the end of this month, Indiana Cares’ money will run out. Carpenter will be out of a job, along with three other staffers. The mini-grants that Indiana Cares has made to set up localized suicide prevention programs will stop. “We were the only place to coordinate and run a statewide suicide prevention program,” Carpenter said. “We’ve done some cutting- edge stuff. We’ve gotten national attention for work we’ve done with blacks and Hispanics.”

It isn’t a surprise, though. Indiana Cares has known for a year this was coming, Carpenter said.