Category: Suicide and Self-Injury
Dev Crasta, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Research Psychologist
Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, VA Finger Lakes Healthcare System
Canandaigua, New York
Kelly Green, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Senior Research Investigator
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jaclyn Kearns, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
National Center for PTSD
Boston, Massachusetts
Samantha Chalker, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Research Health Scientist Specialist
VA San Diego Healthcare System/University of California, San Diego
San Diego, California
Angie Waliski, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System
Sherwood, Arkansas
Marianne Goodman, M.D.
Professor
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Bronx, New York
This symposium honors the career of Dr. Barbara Stanley (1949-2023) through studies building on one of her major contributions to the field, the Safety Planning Intervention (SPI; Stanley & Brown, 2012). In the 15 years since the first SPI manuals, SPI widely proliferated as a best practice. This includes being endorsed in the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense Clinical Practice Guidelines, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Best Practice List, and the Joint Commission’s Resources to fulfill National Patient Safety Goals. While aspects of the SPI existed in a range of cognitive behavioral therapies for suicide prevention, Drs. Stanley’s and Brown’s innovation was to combine these elements into a stand-alone intervention that can be implemented in a range of settings.
This symposium follows this line of development by extending the practice even further toward enhancing clients’ social supports. These extensions include having patients build plans together in groups, leveraging peer specialists included in multiple hospital settings, and paying closer attention to SPI’s social contact steps. In this way, SPI is not simply viewed as an intervention to prevent suicidal crises, but an opportunity to build positive support networks around a patient. The four presentations in the symposium span the continuum from basic research to fully powered clinical trials. Furthermore, speakers come from a range of career stages, regions, and disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, counseling), highlighting the impact SPI has had on a generation of clinicians.
The presentations begin with Dr. Jaclyn Kearns, who will present a study of safety plans developed in Veterans Affairs (VA) inpatient psychiatric units. Results suggest safety plan quality predicts suicide attempts in the months after discharge with a key role for social contacts. Next, Dr. Samantha Chalker will present on the process of engaging VA Peer Specialists in the process of developing a peer-delivered tool to enhance the SPI. This intervention development project highlights the value of community-engaged perspectives. Dr. Angie Waliski will build on the role of peer specialists by describing the results of a pilot trial involving peer specialists in the emergency department of a large community hospital. Her findings indicate specialists with lived experience of suicide can play an important role in improving safety plan quality. Finally, Dr. Marianne Goodman will present on a multi-site randomized control trial of a VA telehealth group, Project Life Force (PLF). These findings will represent the first large-scale trial examining the efficacy of social approaches to maximize SPI.
Our discussant, Dr. Kelly Green will integrate these presentations by drawing from her extensive experience studying the effectiveness and implementation of evidence-based suicide interventions, including the SPI, across a range of settings. Additionally, she will draw on her experience of collaborating with Dr. Stanley over the last decade to discuss how these works reflect Dr. Stanley's research and personal impact on the field of suicide prevention.
