Skip to main content
ABCT 2023 Annual Convention Main banner
Final Program


Program Flipbook
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Presentation Icons
Ticketed Session
Ticketed Session
Recorded Session
Recorded Session
Back
ViewAttendees 14

Symposia

Suicide and Self-Injury

Session: Increasing the effectiveness of real-time suicide intervention

1 - (SYM 65) Developing and Testing an Automated Real-time Suicide Risk Intervention Tool

Saturday, November 18, 2023
10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PST
Location: Skykomish (604), Level 6
Real-time monitoring methods – such as ecological momentary assessment – capture fine-grained information about suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) as they occur and thus have immense potential to advance our understanding of suicide. However, collecting real-time data on STBs presents complex ethical challenges, including about whether and how to monitor or respond to incoming information about STBs from suicidal individuals. Currently, in response to incoming real-time data indicating high suicide risk, researchers typically either provide a static message with crisis resources or intervene by contacting participants within hours of the response. Both approaches have limitations. Static messages are easy for participants to habituate to or ignore, especially during periods of high distress. Active outreach from a clinician may lead participants to underreport their suicidal thoughts to avoid an unwanted intervention, requires significant resources from researchers, and is delayed after the initial response. Given the increasing use of real-time monitoring methods to study STBs, there is an urgent need for novel, effective, and scalable tools for responding to suicide risk in real-time. To address this need, we developed a novel automated and interactive tool that promotes use of crisis services in real-time, in response to reports of elevated suicidal thinking. First, we will present on process of the adaption of an evidence-based Barrier Reduction Intervention that aims to increase the use of crisis resources for deployment in real-time monitoring research. Next, results will be presented from a fourteen-day real-time monitoring study of adults with recent suicidal thoughts on the feasibility, acceptability, and utility of this tool. Data collection for the study will occur from March 2023 to June 2023. Specific outcomes will include how frequently participants report using crisis resources after being presented with the intervention. The potential and challenges of creating digital tools for ethical, safe, and scalable risk management in an emerging area of suicide research will be discussed.