Fundamentals of Community-Based Suicide Prevention

Suicide, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation represent leading causes of death and disability in the United States. In response, federal agencies have recommended that communities take a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention with actions that span multiple levels of prevention. State and community partners in this work, however, have expressed uncertainty on exactly how to begin with this approach. As a starting point, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (NAASP) issued a report on Transforming Communities: Key Elements for the Implementation of Comprehensive Community-Based Suicide Prevention (2017). This course builds on Transforming Communities to provide a roadmap for and descriptions of essential strategies within a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. The course begins with a rationale for taking a public health approach to suicide prevention and follows with a roadmap for the comprehensive approach. Further sessions focus on specific strategies and settings for suicide prevention with a review of research and recommendations intended to help anyone interested in community-based suicide prevention understand how to engage with this important work.

After completing this training, the participant will be able to:

  1. Describe the components of a public health approach to suicide prevention.
  2. Describe the components of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention.

Learning Objectives

This course is comprised of 7 video sessions.

Session 1: Introduction: Characteristics of Suicide and Challenges in Prevention

Time to complete: 48 minutes, 16 seconds

Learning objectives:

  • Identify characteristics of suicide that underlie challenges in prevention work.
  • Distinguish between the “public health” and “high risk/clinical” approaches to suicide prevention.

Session 2: Overview of Suicide Prevention: The Public Health Approach and Comprehensive Programming

Time to complete: 55 minutes, 37 seconds

Learning objectives:

  • Use the public health approach to suicide prevention to categorize interventions according to risk and protective factors, social-ecological levels of influence, levels of prevention, and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Keys to Success.
  • Identify the different components of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention.
  • Recognize when actions appear to be a reactive approach to suicide prevention.

Session 3: Messaging and Communications: Framework for Successful Messaging

Time to complete: 40 minutes, 18 seconds

Learning objectives:

  • Identify the four components of the NAASP’s Framework for Successful Messaging.
  • Recognize examples of unsafe messaging and safe messaging.
  • Recognize cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of stigma.

Session 4: Connectedness in Suicide Prevention

Time to complete: 50 minutes, 27 seconds

Learning objectives:

  • Categorize connectedness-based interventions according to social-ecological levels of influence.
  • Identify examples of connectedness as subjective appraisal, adaptive norms and expectations, and emotional and instrumental support.

Session 5: Recognition and Referral: Gatekeeper Role in Suicide Prevention

Time to complete: 43 minutes, 59 seconds

Learning objectives:

  • State the components of the gatekeeper role in suicide prevention.
  • Recognize potential limitations of gatekeeper training.

Session 6: Lethal Means Safety: Firearms and Suicide risk

Time to complete: 1 hour, 13 minutes

Learning objectives:

  • State four research findings that underlie the effectiveness of reducing access to lethal means as a suicide prevention strategy.
  • Categorize lethal means safety interventions according to levels of prevention (universal, selective, indicated).

Session 7: Health Care Settings: Suicide Care and the Zero Suicide Framework

Time to complete: 1 hour, 2 minutes

Learning objectives:

  • Recognize the seven elements of the Zero Suicide framework.
  • Name the report used as the basis for the Henry Ford Health System’s Perfect Depression Care initiative.
  • Distinguish between management of suicide risk and treatment of suicide risk.
Course summary
Course opens: 
07/31/2024
Course expires: 
07/01/2029

Dr. Jeffrey Sung is a board-certified psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor in the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. His work includes training and advisory roles with Forefront Suicide Prevention and the Center for Suicide Prevention and Recovery. He has developed and delivered trainings on suicide prevention, suicide care, and responding to patient suicide locally and nationally for a broad range of health professionals, lay audiences and organizations, including technology companies and the U.S. Navy. For seventeen years, he provided psychiatric care in downtown Seattle through a Health Care for the Homeless Network grant. Dr. Sung also maintains a private practice for patient care, training, forensic and clinical consultation.

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