HAVEN-Connect Youth Suicide Prevention

Overview

HAVEN=CONNECT is a comprehensive depression and suicide prevention intervention that is designed to be integrated into predominantly Black churches, a strategically ideal location for mental health intervention for Black youth. HAVEN=CONNECT has three components: (1) Church Community Engagement: an interactive process of introducing the program to key church leaders and stakeholder groups. (2) Faith-Based Curriculum: educational overview for pastors, other ministerial staff and youth lay leaders on how to integrate the program into the church using communication mediums that have cultural and religious relevance in the Black Church context. (3) Youth-Connect Intervention: The goals of this project are to test the impact of HAVEN=CONNECT (HAVEN) on key intervention targets, hypothesized mediators, and build a research-informed implementation strategy for future large-scale testing.

Aim 1: Efficacy. The investigators will implement HAVEN in 12 churches using a cluster randomized waitlist design and enroll 240 adolescents (ages 13-19). The investigators hypothesize that adolescents in HAVEN churches vs. those in wait-listed churches will have decreased depression symptoms (primary outcome) and suicide risk scores at 1-month and 6-month follow-up after the start of the multi-component HAVEN. Suicide risk will be a secondary outcome due to lower expected statistical power to detect impact vs. depression. The investigators also expect HAVEN to decrease other mental health symptoms that are secondary outcomes (e.g., anxiety). The investigators will test for differences by gender, age, and level of depression and suicide risk at baseline. Aim 2: Mechanisms. The second aim is to test hypothesized mediators of HAVEN impact. It is hypothesized that HAVEN will increase (a) adolescents' positive bonds to peers and adults in their church, perceptions of cohesion, and healthy norms in those networks; (b) emotional and behavior self-regulation, and (c) increased use of mental health services (H1). HAVEN impact on reducing depression and suicide risk will be mediated by those changes (H2). Aim 3: Implementation. The investigators will identify implementation barriers and facilitators by examining adherence data (i.e., completion of HAVEN steps and clergy/member engagement) and then gathering qualitative data from a subset of 4 churches, 2 identified as implementing HAVEN with high adherence and 2 with lower adherence. This aim involves semi-structured key informant interviews. The investigators will also train church and community members as HAVEN=CONNECT co-trainers, assess their fidelity of training using existing fidelity measures, as part of this aim on identifying strategies for sustaining HAVEN after the end of the grant period and for scalability. Primary outcome variable for Youth: Suicide risk \& depression Secondary outcome variable for Youth: Anxiety Mediators for Youth: mental health service use, emotion regulation skills, stressful life events, adolescent experiences with discrimination, peer networks, help-seeking acceptability, group cohesion, healthy peer norms and behaviors, trusted adult networks, Helpfulness of Adults with emotions, positive communication with parents, demographic information. Adult mediators: satisfaction with training, retention of skills, intention to use skills in personal life and with youth, adoption of skills, experience engaging youth with skills, and adult peer network.