New York

New York State Office of Mental Health
Garrett Lee Smith State
Active
2019
New York

New Yorkers Advancing Suicide Safer Care for Youth (NYASSC for Youth) The New Yorkers Advancing Suicide Safer Care (NYASSC) for Youth project will reduce suicide attempts and deaths among youth ages 10-24 through clinical provision of suicide safer care in multiple service settings and school- and community-based suicide prevention activities in Onondaga County and statewide. The project will provide clinical services to 34,575 youth: 5,459 in Year 1 and 7,279 each in Years 2-5. The project will also provide QPR training to 150,000 college students, 5,000 faculty and staff, 500 campus police, and 500 staff in juvenile justice, foster care, and out-of-school-time programs; these programs will identify key staff for ASIST training. College and university activities will be implemented statewide across the State University of New York (SUNY) 64-campus system. The project plans a clinical systems and community demonstration project in Onondaga County for statewide dissemination in Years 4 and 5. This demonstration project will expand an existing Zero Suicide Safety Net for adults to cover youth ages 10-24 and will incorporate non-clinical stakeholders including schools, colleges and universities, juvenile justice, foster care, an LGBT youth organization (Q Center), and the Boys and Girls Club. The Office of Mental Health will partner with the Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia University to advance implementation of Zero Suicide across the state, including screening and assessing for suicide risk, developing a prevention-oriented risk formulation and a suicide care management plan, providing suicide specific evidence-based treatment and brief interventions, and implementing protocols for transition of care and follow up when youth move to a different level of care. The four goals of the project are to 1) develop, test, and disseminate a model of suicide safer care for youth, 2) provide prevention, intervention, and treatment for school-age youth during school and out-of-school time, 3) create suicide safer college campuses through gatekeeper training, outreach, and collaboration, and 4) evaluate the project’s impact on changes in suicide risk identification, clinical service delivery, and lethal and non-lethal suicide attempts. With input and guidance from individuals with lived experience and members of the NYS Suicide Prevention Council, project goals will be accomplished through the following objectives: engaging health systems leadership; conducting learning collaboratives; training providers; developing and implementing site-specific protocols; providing gatekeeper training to schools, colleges, and community-based youth serving organizations and systems; promoting NYS Crisis Text; providing postvention support; creating a robust suicide surveillance infrastructure; and conducting an outcome evaluation to assess impact of the project on suicide attempts and deaths. In Year 4, the NYS Suicide Prevention Conference will highlight the rollout of the model tested during this project in Onondaga County, and the state’s suicide prevention website will be used to disseminate materials and best practices across the state.