Suicide Care Research Center

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults in the United States, responsible for more deaths than any single medical illness. Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are a major public health problem: they are recurrent, lead to extensive health care, and increase risk for death by suicide. The past two decades have seen notable increases in youth suicide deaths, attempts, and suicidal thinking. Approximately 1 in 5 U.S. high school students report serious suicidal thoughts in the past year and 1 in 10 have made a suicide attempt. In the absence of integrated outpatient solutions, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of emergency rooms (61% increase from 2007-15) while access to inpatient psychiatry units that care for suicidal young people has fallen (60% decrease from 1990-2008). The Suicide Care Research Center at the University of Washington will respond to this critical need by partnering with clinicians, youth who have experienced suicidality, and their families to develop outpatient solutions that are optimized for effectiveness, affordability, scalability, and efficiency and can be accessed by all Americans. Our aim is to assure our solutions are what patients and clinicians want and are feasible in primary care, pediatrics, and other medical clinics where suicidal adolescents and young adults are most likely to seek help. Our Signature project – Swift Outpatient Alternative for Rapid Stabilization (SOARS) – is an optimization trial of a just-in-time mental health intervention that offers medical providers an outpatient alternative to referring families to the emergency room. The Center also includes three Exploratory projects using human centered design to co-design just-in-time interventions with clinicians, patients, and their families. These three interventions will help medical providers, and their Integrated Behavioral Health teams to (1) better monitor and manage suicide risk via ecological momentary assessment, (2) improve risk assessment, shared decision making and safety plans using technology, and (3) use clinical narrative approaches to better treat suicidal thinking. Eight pilot projects will be selected to address other needs of medical clinics overwhelmed with management of suicidal young people. All studies will be coordinated through an Administrative Core that provides mentoring, training and experience for Collaborating Scholars from other disciplines alongside suicide researchers. A Policy Core will create and support partnerships with policy makers, primary care networks, and people with lived experience of suicidality to inform intervention development and evaluation. Center research will be centralized by the Methods Core to assure all studies are harmonized in both design and data collection including with the electronic medical record. The Center will conclude with a National Policy Briefing on Center findings to maximize dissemination.