Safety Planning in Juvenile Justice for Suicidal Youth

Overview

This study will examine the feasibility and acceptability of a program designed to conduct safety planning with youth in the juvenile justice system who are at risk for a suicide attempt and/or self-injury and to increase the possibility of them receiving outpatient mental health treatment. After training staff in the intervention, the investigators will pilot test the safety planning intervention and gather information on how well it worked on reducing self-harm, getting families to follow up with referrals for mental health care, and how often they attend treatment.

The Juvenile Justice System (JJS) has not implemented any evidenced-based interventions that address suicidal behavior or nonsuicidal self-injury, hereafter referred collectively to as self-injury, with JJS-involved youth. This application proposes to test a scalable intervention, safety planning, that aims to reduce self-injury in adolescents involved in the JJS. Safety planning, which can be a stand-alone brief intervention, was cited as a best practice by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center/American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Best Practices Registry for Suicide Prevention. This study will have two phases. In Phase I, the investigators will conduct an open trial with 10 adolescents which will allow us to make any modifications necessary for using the protocol in a Probation Department. The investigators will then randomize 60 youth on Probation who screen positive for recent self-injury into standard care or the safety planning intervention. Counselors with community mental health experience embedded in Probation will conduct the intervention, consistent with the co-responder model found across JJS in the U.S. in which a Probation Officer works collaboratively with a mental health professional to coordinate care. In order to further conduct the study under conditions most relevant to a future implementation trial, the investigators will also employ a training approach that has been successfully implemented in a psychiatric hospital with Bachelors and Masters level staff. In Phase II, of the study, the investigators will: a) conduct qualitative interviews in Probation about attitudes toward the intervention as well as barriers to a future, larger implementation trial; and b) contract with the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice to conduct a Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) Mapping. The SIM is a conceptual framework to outline a series of "points of interception" along the JJS continuum in a state where screening and brief intervention may be implemented. In the Mapping, the investigators will examine the JJS continuum from arrest; to an initial hearing; to jail awaiting trial or adjudication; incarceration; to release or reentry; and finally, to community supervision. These data will provide a working framework to help assess current views within the statewide JJS as a starting point to proposing a future, larger trial. This research also has the potential to directly inform treatment practices in JJ settings and has significant implications for scalability and dissemination in order to build a stronger, more effective system of mental health/JJS collaboration around self-injury screening and intervention.