Event & Training Types: General Webinar

The Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) and partners shared SPRC’s new report, Data Infrastructure: Recommendations for State Suicide Prevention. This report is a supplement to SPRC’s Recommendations for State Suicide Prevention Infrastructure. Webinar participants learned about six concrete recommendations from the resource, focused on creating infrastructure to support data-driven decision-making in suicide prevention.

Presenters from Colorado and Texas shared examples of their states’ data infrastructure.

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Data Infrastructure: Recommendations for State Suicide Prevention

Webinar Slides-Creating a Stronger Data Infrastructure for Suicide Prevention.pdf

Transcript 2020-2-25_Public Webinar_Creating a Stronger Data Infrastructure for Suicide Prevention.pdf

Mental health professionals continue to provide therapy for patients using telehealth despite this new era of quarantine and COVID-19. This is a significant change for most but research suggests that telehealth can be just as effective as face-to-face therapy and for some patients, it is even preferable. Many clinicians were treating patients at risk for suicide safely in outpatient settings, rarely turning to hospitalization, prior to this quarantine and can continue to provide safe and effective care using telehealth.

New patients expressing thoughts of suicide may also emerge during this time. In a time when hospitals are already beyond capacity and risk for transmission of coronavirus disease is extremely high within the walls of the physical health care setting, hospitalization or emergency department visits for people expressing thoughts of suicide should be kept to a minimum. The use of evidence-based suicide care practices can significantly reduce suicide thoughts and behaviors, even when delivered via telehealth.

This webinar addressed the use of three best practices in caring for people at risk for suicide that can be delivered easily and effectively via telehealth: safety plans, treatment that directly targets thoughts of suicide, and DBT-based self-help skills and resources that clinicians can start employing in treatment immediately as well as share with patients.
 
Speakers:

Dr. Barbara Stanley, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, Dr. David Jobes, The Catholic University of America, and Dr. Ursula Whiteside, Founder, NowMattersNow.org and Clinical Faculty, University of Washington. These three speakers are national and international experts in suicide prevention and treatment. They presented these three treatment practices with a focus on how to start using them immediately with patients via telehealth.

 
Additional Resources

Check out these short webinar excerpts in which Dr. Stanley provides concrete tips for making sure clients stay safe without having to rely on hospitalization. Take a few minutes to learn about initiating and maintaining remote contact, assessing suicide risk, and developing a safety plan remotely.

Archived Webinar

PowerPoint Slides

Supplemental Resources: Treating Suicidal Patients during COVID-19: Best Practices and Telehealth Webinar

Transcript

This training series from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) provides those working in suicide prevention with the information and skills to create and maintain partnerships to reduce access to lethal means of suicide—a part of the comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. In this webinar, we discussed how to build skills to enhance partnerships for lethal means reduction work and described how to focus your partnership’s work on a specific lethal means reduction area. Susan Keys, Ph.D. presented on her research on building partnerships with primary care providers in rural areas to talk about gun safety with patients.

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In the second part of this training series, we discussed incorporating racial equity in our work to reduce access to lethal means. We then heard from Danette Gibbs, Director of Research and Strategic Planning from the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia at James Madison University, who spoke about reducing access to lethal means on college campuses. Then Eileen Zeller, consultant and former lead advisor at the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), presented on implementing Emergency Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) as a strategy to reduce firearm suicide deaths.

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The webinar is designed to train frontline clinicians and their teams on skills for suicide risk assessment, evidence-based interventions, referral and transition when needed, and how to change the culture of addressing suicide risk across the clinician’s practice. By participating, learners will be able to review evidence-based data which will be supported by approaches and application methods.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among youth ages 10 to 24,¹ with the fastest-growing rates among youth ages 10 to 14.² There is significant racial disparity, with suicide rates among Black youth ages 13 and younger twice that for White youth.³ According to 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) data, nearly 20% of students (grades 9 to 12) reported seriously considering suicide in the prior year.⁴  

Youth at risk for suicide are often seen by health care providers in the weeks and months prior to their deaths, indicating that there are opportunities to intervene.⁵ For example, approximately 80% of youth who died by suicide had visited a health care provider in the year before their death, and 40% had had a general primary care visit.⁶ In addition to primary care, emergency departments and inpatient facilities are critical settings for suicide prevention, as the rates of emergency department visits and inpatient hospitalizations for suicidal ideation and suicide attempts doubled between 2007 and 2015.^{7, 8} 

Medical settings can therefore play an important role in reducing youth suicide. Pediatric primary care, emergency departments, and other medical inpatient units can be critical settings to identify and care for youth at risk of suicide. Physicians and other staff are well suited to conduct routine screening and risk assessments and adopt robust clinical care pathways that can better care for and protect youth. Since many systems do not universally screen for suicide risk and individuals are unlikely to disclose suicide risk when not asked directly, youth who are at risk may be undetected despite receiving care, and that care is unlikely to include suicide-specific interventions.⁹ 

Zero Suicide provides a systems-level framework for improving suicide care across settings. Zero Suicide can be leveraged to embed standardized risk identification and development of clear clinical care pathways, as well as suicide-specific treatment and critical follow-up practices. In this webinar, presenters will discuss effective suicide prevention practices applicable to medical settings, the role of clinical care pathways and workflows that provide guidance and support for health system staff, and ways to leverage the Collaborative Care Model to connect primary and mental health care for adolescents at risk for suicide. 

References:

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) [online]. (May 2021). Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars
2. Horowitz, L., Tipton, M. V., & Pao, M. (2020). Primary and Secondary Prevention of Youth Suicide. Pediatrics, 145(Suppl 2), S195–S203.
3. Bridge, J. A., Horowitz, L. M., Fontanella, C. A., Sheftall, A. H., Greenhouse, J., Kelleher, K. J., & Campo, J. V. (2018). Age-related racial disparity in suicide rates among US youths from 2001 through 2015. JAMA pediatrics, 172(7), 697-699.
4. Ivey-Stephenson AZ, Demissie Z, Crosby AE, et al. Suicidal Ideation and Behaviors Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2019. MMWR Suppl 2020;69(Suppl-1):47–55. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su6901a6
5. Fontanella, C. A., Warner, L. A., Steelesmith, D., Bridge, J. A., Sweeney, H. A., & Campo, J. V. (2020). Clinical profiles and health services patterns of Medicaid-enrolled youths who died by suicide. JAMA pediatrics, 174(5), 470-477.
6. Ahmedani, B. K., Simon, G. E., Stewart, C., Beck, A., Waitzfelder, B. E., Rossom, R., … & Solberg, L. I. (2014). Health care contacts in the year before suicide death. Journal of general internal medicine, 29(6), 870-877.
7. Burstein, B., Agostino, H., & Greenfield, B. (2019). Suicidal attempts and ideation among children and adolescents in US emergency departments, 2007-2015. JAMA pediatrics, 173(6), 598-600.
8. Plemmons, G., Hall, M., Doupnik, S., Gay, J., Brown, C., Browning, W., … & Williams, D. (2018). Hospitalization for suicide ideation or attempt: 2008–2015. Pediatrics, 141(6).
9. Horowitz, L. M., Roaten, K., Pao, M., & Bridge, J. A. (2020). Suicide prevention in medical settings: The case for universal screening. General Hospital Psychiatry, 63, 7-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2018.11.009

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The Zero Suicide framework emphasizes the inclusion of suicide attempt and loss survivors as a key tenet of implementation success for all health and behavioral health systems. In this webinar, presenters will discuss how having lived experience integrated across all staff roles and levels can transform organizational culture; the impact of peer support initiatives on suicide prevention practices and service delivery; and concrete approaches for successfully embedding lived experience in an organization’s standard practices.

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Over the last two decades, suicide-related deaths in the United States have generally increased each year, and young adults (those ages 18-25) are especially vulnerable. Young adults are the age group with the greatest prevalence of suicidal ideation as well as past-year suicide attempts. Suicide-specific interventions such as safety planning, cognitive behavior therapy for suicide prevention (CBT-SP), and (among others), collaborative assessment and management of suicide (CAMS) can be effective at reducing suicidal ideation, behavior and hospitalization.

However, many young adults are not interested in, or cannot access, traditional forms of treatment, which limits the number who will receive in-person suicide care. Digital mental health interventions can be used to reach and engage individuals who are unable to receive (or uninterested in) traditional in-person mental health services.

Fortunately, young adults appear to be interested in using self-directed digital technologies to help manage their mental health symptoms, so digital mental health interventions may help close the treatment gap. This presentation reviews the safety, acceptability, and emerging efficacy and effectiveness of existing digital mental health interventions for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. This presentation also reviews the dissemination and implementation of these tools in different settings across the country.

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This webinar explores ways to improve suicide care and treatment using insights from lived experience. The discussion includes an overview of community-based alternatives to hospitalization and suicide care clinical treatment models, as well as research on the impact of peer support and positive media messaging on suicide risk.

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This presentation helps practitioners and others understand suicide from a risk management perspective. The incidence of suicide is on the rise, and it is important for practitioners to understand how to assess risk among various populations and develop plans with patients to mitigate these risks. This presentation also reviews how liability works in legal settings and how to reduce the chance of malpractice. It also discusses standards of care regarding assessment and documentation, with some focus on firearms and risk assessment as an important risk mitigation strategy. This presentation will also review how to incorporate thinking of safety nets in risk reduction strategies.  

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