Suicide Prevention Best Practices
Practice
American Indian Life Skills
Description: AILS is a school-based suicide prevention curriculum which addresses suicide risk factors and improves protective factors among AI adolescents 14 to 19 years old. It is designed to drastically reduce suicidal thinking and behavior. The curriculum includes lesson plans covering topics such as building self-esteem, identifying emotions and stress, increasing communication and problem-solving skills, recognizing and eliminating self-destructive behavior, learning about suicide, role-playing around suicide prevention, and setting personal and community goals. The curriculum typically is delivered over 30 weeks during the school year, with students participating in lessons 3 times per week.
Tribes Using Practice: MSPI Kiowa Tribe of OK
Practice
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST)
Description: ASIST is a gatekeeper and skills-building training program that aims to prevent suicide by raising awareness of societal attitudes about suicide; enhancing communication, identification, and intervention skills; and increasing knowledge of resources for both caregivers and people at risk. Although it is not yet considered an EBP, ASIST is included on the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Best Practices Registry.
Tribes Using Practice: Majority of projects focusing on suicide prevention
Practice
Connect Program(“Postvention”),aka "New Hampshire Connect" or "NAMI Connect"
Description: This nationally recognized suicide response and prevention EBP uses a public health approach and best practice protocols. Customized to meet training and service needs of audiences, additional culturally appropriate components are included. Connect cross-training relies on collaboration between service providers.
Tribes Using Practice: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe MSPI
Practice
Distribution of Gun Safes (Local PP) See e.g., Firearms Safety Coalition's Role in NH Suicide Prevention
Description: To restrict access to lethal means of suicide and reduce harm, the MSPI project devoted resources to distributing gun safes to families, and also made them available to attendees at gun shows. (Paraphrase of progress report information.)
Tribes Using Practice: Bristol Bay Area Health Corp. MSPI
Practice
Description: Increases knowledge of suicide warning signs and referral points; enhances communication and intervention skills; and employs a train-the-trainer model to facilitate wide-spread application of Gatekeeper tactics beyond the project personnel to staff in partner agencies and organizations.
Tribes Using Practice: Crow Tribe MSPI [Billings]
Practice
Lifelines: A Comprehensive Suicide Awareness and Responsiveness Program for Teens
Description: The only existing model of its kind available for teens, this is a whole-school curriculum program with 3 unique components: Lifelines: Prevention, Lifelines: Intervention, and Lifelines: Postvention
Tribes Using Practice: MSPI Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, MSPI Eastern Shoshone Tribe
Practice
Mental Health First Aid training
Description: Mental Health First Aid is an in-person training that teaches how to help people developing a mental illness or in a crisis
Tribes Using Practice: MSPI Utah Navajo Health System, Inc.
Practice
Model Adolescent Suicide Prevention Program (MASPP)
Description: The Model Adolescent Suicide Prevention Program (MASPP) is a public health-oriented suicidal-behavior prevention and intervention program originally developed for a small American Indian tribe in rural New Mexico to target high rates of suicide among its adolescents and young adults. The goals of the program are to reduce the incidence of adolescent suicides and suicide attempts through community education about suicide and related behavioral issues, such as child abuse and neglect, family violence, trauma, and alcohol and substance abuse. As a community-wide initiative, the MASPP incorporates universal, selective, and indicated interventions and emphasizes community involvement, ownership, and culturally framed public health approaches appropriate for an American Indian population.
Tribes Using Practice: N/A
Practice
Parenting with Love and Limits
Description: Parenting with Love and Limits (PLL) combines group therapy and family therapy to treat children and adolescents aged 10-18 who have severe emotional and behavioral problems (e.g., conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and frequently co-occurring problems such as depression, alcohol or drug use, chronic truancy, destruction of property, domestic violence, or suicidal ideation. PLL teaches families how to reestablish adult authority through consistent limits while reclaiming a loving relationship. It includes six multifamily sessions, conducted by two facilitators that employ group discussions, videotapes, age-specific breakout sessions, and role-play. Individual families also receive intensive 1- to 2-hour therapy sessions in an outpatient or home-based setting to practice the skills learned in the group setting.
Tribes Using Practice: Kodiak Native Health Association
Practice
Peer-mentoring, Sources of Strength
Description: At-risk youth with adults and peer mentors trained in the Sources of Strength Youth Suicide Prevention program (see SOS description, below). Trained peer leaders use their network of friends to:
- Have one-on-one conversations
- Develop a Hope, Help, Strength poster and/or PSA program using local faces and voices
- Present peer to peer presentations
- Develop video, internet, or texting messages.
The program often starts as 3-6 month project, but is designed as a multi-year project with ongoing peer messaging and contacts growing over time.
Tribes Using Practice: Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa DVPI
Practice
Description: QPR, or Question, Persuade, and Refer, outlines three simple steps that anyone can learn to help save a life from suicide. People trained in QPR learn how to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis and how to question, persuade, and refer someone to help. QPR can be learned in the Gatekeeper course in as little as one hour. According to the Surgeon General’s National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (2001), a gatekeeper is someone in a position to recognize a crisis and the warning signs that someone may be contemplating suicide. Gatekeepers include parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, ministers, doctors, nurses, office supervisors, squad leaders, foremen, police officers, advisors, caseworkers, firefighters, and many others who are strategically positioned to recognize and refer someone at risk of suicide. A QPR-trained Gatekeeper will be trained to: recognize the warning signs of suicide; know how to offer hope; and know how to get help and save a life.
Tribes Using Practice: Crow Tribe MSPI [Billings]
Practice
SafeTALK (Suicide Awareness for Everyone: Talk, Ask, Listen, Keepsafe)
SafeTALK is a 3-hour video training that prepares people age 15 and older to identify persons with thoughts of suicide and connect them to suicide first aid resources. Most people with thoughts of suicide look for help to stay safe. Alert helpers know how to use these opportunities to support that desire for safety. A safeTALK-trained suicide alert helper will be able to: move beyond common tendencies to miss, dismiss or avoid suicide; identify people who have thoughts of suicide; and apply the TALK steps (Tell, Ask, Listen and KeepSafe) to connect a person with suicide thoughts to suicide first aid, intervention caregivers.
Tribes Using Practice: N/A
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
Description: Described as a practical, goal-driven model, a hallmark of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), also called Solution-Focused Therapy, is its emphasis on clear, concise, realistic goal negotiations. The SFBT approach assumes that all clients have some knowledge of what would make their life better, even though they may need some (at times, considerable) help describing the details of their better life and that everyone who seeks help already possesses at least the minimal skills necessary to create solutions.
Tribes Using Practice: N/A
Practice
SOS Signs of Suicide
Description: A secondary school-based suicide prevention program that includes screening and education. Students are: screened for depression and suicide risk and referred for professional help; view a video that teaches them to recognize signs of depression and suicide in themselves and others; and taught the appropriate response to these signs (i.e., the ACT technique: acknowledge that there is a problem, let the person know you care, and tell a trusted adult).
Tribes Using Practice: MSPI Kiowa Tribe
Practice
Sources of Strength
Description: Sources of Strength is a strength-based comprehensive wellness program that focuses on suicide prevention but impacts other issues such as substance abuse and violence. It is based on a relational connections model that uses teams of peer leaders mentored by adult advisors to change peer social norms about help seeking and encourages them to individually assess and develop strengths in their life.
Tribes Using Practice: Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa DVPI
Practice
Suicide Intervention Model (SIM): John Hopkins Celebrating Life Apache suicide prevention initiative
Description: The project collaborates with the Johns Hopkins Celebrating Life program which invited participation from all communities on the Fort Apache Reservation and focused on youth empowerment, substance abuse prevention and treatment services. The conferences served over 1,000 participants providing opportunity for suicide prevention information, recruitment for participation in suicide awareness and intervention trainings, promoting information on how to make a referral for a person at risk, and showcasing prevention programs throughout the reservation. Empowerment Workshops were implemented in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Celebrating Life program held at venues in each of the 3 most populous communities on the Fort Apache Reservation
Tribes Using Practice: MSPI White Mountain Apache Phoenix
Practice
Description: Students from across Alaska decided to create a "Wall of Hope" at their schools during Alaska Suicide Prevention Week held September 9-15 to identify positive aspects in their lives that highlight why living is important to them. Students worked together with their peers, teachers, counselors, and administrators to conduct a safe, informative, meaningful, and memorable "Wall of Hope" in their schools.
Tribes Using Practice: N/A
Practice
Youth Ambassadors Program
Description: "The Youth Ambassadors program is a unique program sponsored by the SEARHC "1 is 2 Many" Task Force. One high school student from each town residing in Southeast Alaska will have the opportunity to become a leader for their school. The 1 is 2 Many Task Force wants to collaborate with all Southeast Alaska partners especially the Youth to endeavor in a community-based approach for suicide prevention. We must engage, we must listen to each other and we must support each other. We need to talk openly about suicide. It should not be a taboo topic. We need to teach the youth that suicide is not ok, and we need to make sure each and every individual knows that there are options and suicide is not one of them." (Excerpt from application and information booklet for the SEARHC program)
Tribes Using Practice: N/A
