Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Doctoral Research Paper
Degree Name
Psy.D.
Organizational Unit
Graduate School of Professional Psychology
First Advisor
Gwen Vogel Mitchell
Second Advisor
Jessica D. Bartley
Third Advisor
Sally Spencer-Thomas
Keywords
Zero suicide model, Chronic suicide, Community mental health center
Abstract
In 2018, Suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the United States (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019), and the American suicide rate continues to rise (Hedegaard, Curtin, & Warner, 2018). The lack of impact in reducing the suicide rate highlights the need to further understand how to help suicidal individuals. Nearly one third of suicides are preceded in the previous year by a visit to a mental health physician (Luoma, Martin, and Person, 2002). This paper proposes a tractable and research-validated strategy for Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) to appreciably reduce the suicide rate among their clients. The strategy is based upon the Zero Suicide (ZS) Model, and gives actionable steps for leadership in CMHCs to make actionable change. The core elements in this strategy include: create a holistic and rigorously implemented strategy that engages all CMHC staff and clients; move from a clinician-responsibility to a team-responsibility model for suicide prevention; regularly evaluate clients for their suicide risk, and in particular tailor interventions differently for chronic and acute suicide risks; create and maintain suitable training for all staff; explicitly engage clients in the suicide prevention effort; when needed, use pharmaceuticals that have been demonstrated to reduce risk, and encourage clients to comply with their drug regimens; and given the regrettably large gaps in research-validated knowledge on how to prevent suicide, maintain a working document, and continue to upgrade the strategy as new research comes to hand.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Statement
Copyright held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Extent
37 pgs
Recommended Citation
Littrell, Helen Louise, "The Zero Suicide Initiative: Implementation Tailored for Individuals with Chronic Suicidality in Community Mental Health Centers" (2020). Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects. 368.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/capstone_masters/368