Check-in With You: The Older Adult Hopelessness Screening Program (OAHS), developed by Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency, assesses levels of hopelessness in older adults and provides early intervention services to reduce suicide risk, improve quality of care, and prevent the onset of serious mental illness. All adults 55+ receiving primary health care services […]
Prevention
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 […]
Building the Evaluation Capacity of Local Programs Serving American Indian/Alaska Native Populations
This report describes the activities of 34 tribal communities served by the Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (CAPT) under SAMHSA’s Science to Service Initiative conducted between 2010 and 2014. The locally-developed programs addressed substance abuse and associated factors both causal (primarily historical trauma) and consequential (primarily suicide). The report discusses evaluation processes, results, challenges […]
Suicide Safe: Suicide Prevention App for Health Care Providers
Suicide Safe, SAMHSA’s new suicide prevention app for mobile devices and optimized for tablets, helps providers integrate suicide prevention strategies into their practice and address suicide risk among their patients. Suicide Safe is a free app based on SAMHSA’s Suicide Assessment Five-Step Evaluation and Triage (SAFE-T) card. SAMHSA’s Suicide Safe helps providers: Learn how to […]
Circle of Life Multimedia Program: Teaching Native Youth Healthy Choices
HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and hepatitis affect American Indian and Alaska Native communities in disproportionate numbers. Circle of Life, based on the medicine wheel, is a unique interactive middle school curriculum to help Native youth model healthy choices and prevent diseases. The program infuses a multimedia rich format with various skill-building games and activities about […]