Suicide deaths among the White Mountain Apache tribe in Arizona dropped by nearly 40 percent between 2006 and 2012 compared to the previous six-year period due to community-based efforts, according to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From 2001 to 2006, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds […]
Emergency room/ clinic
Surveillance Success Stories: Fort Peck Indian Reservation
Following a coordinated emergency response to a suicide cluster in 2010, tribal leaders began collecting data from multiple sources to describe detailed circumstances of suicide ideation, attempts and deaths. This allowed them to identify the role of substance abuse in suicide attempts and initiate family education for family members of previously suicidal individuals when they […]
Integration Playbook: A Guide to Integrating Behavioral Health in Primary Care Settings
AHRQ’s Academy for Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care developed the Integration Playbook as a guide to integrating behavioral health in primary care and other ambulatory care settings. Integrated primary care (or integrated ambulatory care) is an emerging approach for improving health care delivery in order to achieve better patient health outcomes. Integrated primary care […]
Suicide Prevention in Rural Tribal Communities: The Intersection of Challenge and Possibility
The authors of this review article conclude that the high rate of suicide among American Indians—and especially youth—in rural areas results from a combination of the risk factors that characteristically contribute to high rates of rural suicide (e.g., social isolation, lack of access to services, and substance abuse) with the long-term consequences of historical trauma […]
Emergency Department Utilization among American Indian Adolescents who Made a Suicide Attempt: A Screening Opportunity
A study of White Mountain Apache adolescents who had attempted suicide found that 82 percent had visited an emergency department (ED) within a year before the attempt. Only a minority of these young people had visited the ED because of suicidal thoughts or self-harm (7 percent) or psychiatric problems (26 percent). The authors suggest that […]
Prompting Discussions of Youth Violence Using Electronic Previsit Questionnaires in Primary Care
This study aimed to determine the efficacy of an electronic previsit questionnaire (PVQ) in prompting youth violence (YV) discussions. The authors found that, overall, 30 percent of adolescents reported some YV involvement. Sixty-five percent of the intervention group and 42 percent of the control group reported discussing YV during their visit. Thirty-one percent of adolescents […]