Grantee Types: Garrett Lee Smith Tribal

Native Americans for Community Action, Inc. (NACA), an Urban Indian Center based in Flagstaff, Arizona proposes to provide evidence-based suicide prevention and intervention services specifically designed to address existing service gaps in the targeted service areas of the greater Flagstaff region and Coconino and Navajo Counties. With a primary goal of developing and nurturing an inter-related network of community based suicide prevention coalitions coordinated through a parenting coalition based in Flagstaff, additional targeted service components will include ASIST/SafeTALK gatekeeper trainings, Teen Screen modeled activities of screening, referral for needed services and follow-up tracking on actual service delivery, and postvention services including traditional Native American ceremonies and practices. Over the initial year of program operations, an estimated 1,130 youth and young adults will be served, the vast majority Native Americans including tribal representation from the Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Yavapai-Apache and Kaibab-Paiute Nations. Nearly 4,000 persons will be served over the three-year funding period. Proposed modifications and expansion of efforts designed to address needed adaptations specific to the Native communities partnering in this program’s efforts have been incorporated by design for increased cultural sensitivity and ultimate program success. Program funding will also be used to provide full scholarships for 12 individuals within partnering communities to receive formal training to become ASIST/SafeTALK trainers. This unique program component will leave a legacy of certified Master Level ASIST and SafeTALK trainers across northern Arizona which will promote the sustained capability of providing Gatekeeper trainings within local and neighboring communities including use of tribal languages. The ability to deliver this message from a position of cultural strength will also help bridge intergenerational gaps including those inherent in delivering training to community elders in a language and cultural context congruent with their own world-view. Partnering community agencies and organizations include the Flagstaff and Page Unified Public School Districts, Kinlani Dormitory, Northern Arizona University, Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, Public Health Service, and Juvenile Detention Center, Northern Arizona Regional Behavioral Health Authority (State of Arizona’s contracted service provider for behavioral health services throughout Northern Arizona), Flagstaff Medical Center (Northern Arizona’s only regional hospital that provides emergency room and inpatient services), faith based and Native American traditional child and youth supporting organizations, and the Veterans Administration and local veterans groups in Flagstaff.

The Native Youth Wellness Initiative is both a local and State-wide prevention program. It encompasses direct suicide prevention activities that target high-risk urban American Indian and Alaska Native youth, ages 10-24, in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as blanketing the State of California Native population with suicide prevention information. The goals of this program center around reduction of suicide completion and attempts through providing culturally appropriate direct services including training of gatekeepers, implementation of mental health screenings within primary care couple with referral to mental health screenings within primary care coupled with referral to mental health therapy, providing opportunities to support protective factors known to aid in the prevention of suicide and promotion of community-based, participatory social media activities that highlight awareness of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. The Native American Health Center has provided medical care, mental health, and substance abuse services to Native American families and their children for over 25 years. Programming is based on a cultural framework that links services, treatment and prevention in a holistic approach that is congruent with Native American values and traditions. In more recent years, the Native American Health Center has incorporated youth prevention services in order to address the specific needs of young Native people. The Native Youth Wellness Initiative will expand on existing prevention efforts to enact a community-focused, culturally specific suicide prevention program for local Native youth. The Native American Health Center has also been working on the State level to address mental health disparities among American Indian and Alaska Natives as well as bring forward messaging to Native women about alcohol and drug use. This work will provide the infrastructure in order to effectively deliver a social media campaign regarding suicide prevention. The Native American Health Center proposes to screen 200 youth in the primary care settings resulting in referrals of all youth demonstrating suicide risk to behavioral health care services and 25 of youth receiving mental health treatment on an annual basis. Further, the Native Youth Wellness Initiative will train 10 gatekeepers, mobilize a culturally competent social media initiative that targets 500 Native American youth with appropriate suicide messaging across the State; and will maximize known protective factors by providing opportunities for youth to feel connected to family and culture. Expected outcomes from the Native Youth Wellness Initiative include: increased number of individuals trained in youth suicide prevention, increased number of Native youth exposed to suicide prevention messages, increased number of Natives that are knowledgeable of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, increased number of opportunities that youth have to feel connected to family and culture, increased number of youth suicide assessments, and increase in utilization of mental health services by the most at-risk Native youth.

Population Served: American Indian Youth Methods: SBIRT, QPR, ASIST, MHFA, Life Skills Number Served: 3,000 total (600 annually)

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation seeks to forge a comprehensive and integrated suicide prevention system to detect, prevent, and provide collaborative early intervention services to American Indian youth and emerging adults (10-24) who reside within the 11-county area of northeastern Oklahoma served by the tribe. This system shall both expand and enhance the current program and provide the foundation for creating prevention prepared communities, meaningful collaborative partnerships, and delivering effective, efficient, and culturally appropriate services.

The Creek Nation Protecting the Future project shall define the need for services, the gaps between needed and available services, barriers to care, and other problems related to the need to implement suicide prevention and early intervention activities for American Indian youth and emerging adults at risk of or currently experiencing issues that may lead to suicide. The project shall increase the number of individuals and clinical providers trained to identify, assess, and manage youth at risk for suicide within the tribal service area. Further, the Creek Nation shall enlist area communities, area youth-serving agencies, educational institutions, Creek Nation health facilities, and public schools in the planning, assessment, implementation, and evaluation of this project. The result will improve the continuity of care, increase utilization of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and further implement the National Suicide Prevention Strategy.

The major outcomes of the project include: Immediately increase the number of AI youth identified as at risk for suicide; increase the number of youth referred for services; increase the number of youth who receive services; increase the number of youth-serving individuals trained to identify, refer, assess, manage, and treat at risk.

The project will serve 3,000 American Indian youth over the course of the project. The target population is rural American Indians age 10-24 who are at risk for suicide or suicide behaviors.

Goal 1: To increase the capacity, effectiveness, and efficiency of suicide prevention services for American Indian youth age 10-24 who reside within the area served by the Creek Nation.

Goal 2: To reduce the prevalence suicide and suicidal behaviors among the at risk youth populations (10-24) in Creek Nation.

Goal 3: To promote systems level change at the tribal level to embrace suicide prevention as a core strategy.

The Creek Nation seeks to forge a comprehensive and integrated suicide prevention system to detect, prevent, and provide early intervention services to 750 American Indian youth who reside within the rural 11-county area of northeastern Oklahoma served by the tribe.  The Creek Nation Guarding the Future project shall define the need for treatment services, the gaps between needed and available services, barriers to services, and other problems related to the need to implement suicide prevention and early intervention activities for American Indian youth at risk of or currently experiencing issues that may lead to suicide.  Further, the Creek Nation shall enlist area communities, area child-serving agencies, Creek Nation health facilities, and schools in the planning, assessment, implementation, and evaluation phases of this project.

The major outcomes of the project include:  Immediately increase the number of AI youth identified as at risk for suicide; increase the number of youth referred for services; increase the number of youth who receive services; increase the number of youth-serving individuals trained to identify, refer, assess, manage, and treat at risk youth; and further promote the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

The cultural appropriateness of the project, often lacking in main-stream approaches, shall be assured through the active participation of community members, consumers, schools, tribal leaders, tribal members, and highly qualified and experienced native staff who bring their own traditional beliefs and values to the planning, implementation, and evaluation processes.

The project will serve 750 American Indian youth over the course of the project.  The target population is rural American Indians who are at great risk for suicide or suicide behaviors. 

Goal 1: To increase the capacity, effectiveness, and efficiency of suicide prevention services for American Indian youth and their families who reside within the area served by the Creek Nation.
Goal 2: To reduce the prevalence suicide and suicidal behaviors among the Creek Nation at risk youth populations.

The Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council (MT WY TLC) Planting Seeds of Hope (PSOH) Suicide Prevention Project will decrease suicide attempts and completions among American Indian/Alaskan Native youth age 10-24 on 8 reservations throughout the state of Montana and Wyoming. These youth have suicide rates that are twice as high as their peers in the rest of the country. It is unacceptable to our reservation communities to be losing youth as young as 10 to suicide. Planting Seeds of Hope will build resilience in Native American youth and build capacity for suicide prevention on the reservations by: 1) Promoting Awareness; 2) Training Gatekeepers; 3) Implementing Screening and Brief Intervention in universal settings; 4) Building protective factors for youth and veterans; 5) Implementing interventions for youth who have attempted suicide; 6) Helping families who have lost someone to suicide; 7) Strengthening coordination and collaboration across sectors.

The mission of the PSOH Project is to improve access to suicide prevention services across all Montana and Wyoming?s tribal communities, while identifying and reducing barriers to care and health disparities as they apply to American Indian Youth and their communities.

The Honor Your Life Program is school and community based and features the following efforts:

1.Gatekeeper Training: The goal is to train school and community staff to recognize someone at risk for suicide, intervene with those at risk, and refer them to an appropriate resource

.2.Natural Helpers: The Natural Helpers program is a peer helping program based on the premise that students go to their friends for help and advice with problems. This program is designed to increase helping skills of youth who are identified as the helpers by their peers.

3.SOS curriculum: The program teaches students how to identify the symptoms of depression and suicidality in themselves or their friends, and encourages help-seeking through the use of the ACT® technique (Acknowledge, Care, Tell). Through the use of modeling, youth are taught to recognize the signs of distress, in either themselves or a friend, and to respond effectively.

4.Native H.O.P.E.: Native H.O.P.E. is a peer-counseling (youth helping youth) curriculum that focuses on suicide prevention and the related risk-factors such as substance abuse, violence, trauma, and depression. This curriculum is a 4-day retreat that includes a one day training of trainers. This is a strengths-based approach that incorporates culture, spirituality, and humor, as well as, awareness and education of the warning signs of suicide.

5.Social Networking Early Intervention: In rural communities, and especially for families without reliable transportation, social networking sites are common venues where a community stays connected. It is also a place where young people spend a majority of their time writing themselves into being and it can be a place to early intervene as many youth express themselves openly on their profiles. Through our consistent use of these social networking sites, we have successfully prevented the loss of life to suicide through our early intervention efforts to identify youth at risk and those who express suicidal concerns on their profiles.

6.Youth Leadership: In an effort to restore hope and a sense of purpose for the future, we have made a strong effort to promote leadership development among Mescalero youth through the following events: Native Wellness Institutes’ Native Youth Leadership Academy, Udall Foundation & Native Nations Institute’s Youth Governance and Entrepreneur Camps, Native H.O.P.E., and the Close-Up Program Where Students Experience Democracy In Action.

Project Life is a three-year youth suicide prevention program that is part of Maniilaq Behavioral Health Services. It is funded by a federal grant from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). Project Life activities include:

• Creation a suicide prevention media campaign
• Production of a youth cultural renewal film
• Facilitation of youth resiliency through learning life skills
• Professional suicide prevention training
• Promote village awareness in prevention, intervention, and postvention
• Proactive facilitation of holistic wellness (body, mind, emotions, spirit)
• Holistic wellness understood as related to issues of identity and connection to traditional Inupiaq cultural wisdom, especially Inupiaq Ilitqusiat
• Letter writing campaign to follow up with people who have attempted suicide, or expressed suicidal ideation

Inupiaq Ilitqusiat (values) presents a cultural wisdom-worldview that is not compatible with suicide. If Inupiaq Ilitqusiat is understood, internalized, and lived, the cause of suicide and other symptoms of a lack of wellness will naturally decrease. Every Inupiat is responsible to all other Inupiat for the survival of our cultural spirit, and the values and traditions through which it survives. Through our extended family, we retain, teach, and live our Inupiat values. With guidance and support from Elders, we must teach our children Inupiat values. Inupiat means, The Real People, Ilitqusiat means, Those things that make us who we are.

The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma has utilized funding from DHHS, SAMHSA GLS Grant for State/Tribal Sponsored Youth Suicide Prevention, Early Intervention has established a proficient and prolific program secured into their own tribal government, and proven necessary as a vital component that tribes must provide to their people. The opportunity to implement and develop the Kiowa Teen Suicide Prevention Program, Saving the Next Generation has provided research-based youth suicide prevention programs through local contractors, tribes, and schools. To further the collaboration with state and tribal entities, and assist the state of Oklahoma and our Nations plan in the Prevention of Youth Suicide. This prevention program aims at assisting in decreasing the incidents of intentional injuries for both tribal and non-tribal youth ages 10-24, which live within our Native American Communities and rural areas of Southwest Oklahoma.

The pertinence of creating wellness in Native Communities must circumvent the old mindset of only addressing the needs of one certain nation or race of people, but ultimately must encompass a greater view that will eventually affect each Nations own legacy. Moreover, we must consider that one human life impinges on all of us no matter what nation, race, age, or gender. The GLS funding has assisted in the possibility of a tribally based system of care, aimed to service its own tribal people, as well as a prototype program, able to provide services to every race & individual living within our close, diverse, & unique communities.

Collaborating with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and under the direction of the Oklahoma State Youth Suicide Prevention Plan, the Kiowa Tribe has made efforts to address the issues of suicide prevention in the Southwest region of Oklahoma. This area of over (13) Counties, also encompasses (7) of our Nations Federally recognized tribes. The tribes that are within our service area are the Kiowa, Comanche, Wichita, Ft. Sill Apache, (Kiowa) Apache, Delaware, and the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma. The Kiowa Tribe stands as the largest populated tribe within this area. With over 16, 500 enrolled members; the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma provides services to many of these counties and tribes within its service area. Suicide has reached a critical and epidemic proportion to many of our Native Communities, within recent years. At which time, only the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma has begun to work on a plan of infrastructure to address Youth Suicide Prevention among the (39) federally recognized tribes located in the state of Oklahoma.

Consequently, our goals remain identical to the GLS initiative, to decrease lives lost by suicide among our Native American People and our Neighbors that live among us, and to save young lives in order to reach their full and vital potential in life.

We hope the success and achievement of what this program has accomplished and has already fulfilled will continue to bring awareness and Save the Next Generation.