By: Caitlyn Brown
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recently began to create and distribute programs aiming to help disseminate information to the public. These Technical Packages encourage the community to take advantage of gathered evidence and practices in a variety of topic areas.
This blog covers the fourth of multiple Technical Package resource posts and focuses on preventing suicide. This particular technical package covers the most recent research and provides techniques for professionals and communities that can help to reduce and prevent suicide. Each report section goes through the rationale for the topic, approaches to implementing the prevention strategy in the community and the outcomes of such techniques. Below, we summarize a couple sections of the Preventing Suicide technical package.
Strengthen Access and Delivery of Suicide Care:
This section provides approaches that can be used to strengthen the access and delivery of suicide care. The first approach focuses on expanding coverage of mental health conditions in health insurance policies at the federal and state level to keep them on par with the coverage of other health concerns. The second approach is reducing provider shortages in underserved areas, increasing individuals access to effective mental health care. The third approach in this section focuses on improving care delivery by placing it into a treatment system.
Promote Connectedness:
This section provides approaches that aim to promote connectedness among individuals by modeling. These approaches discuss techniques such as implementing peer norm programs and increasing community engagement activities. By modeling engagement within the community, it can act as protective factors against suicide.
Teach Coping and Problem-Solving Skills:
These approaches focus on social-emotional learning programs, parenting skill programs, and family relationship programs. If implemented, these programs would aid in teaching coping and problem-solving skills to individuals in the community.
Identify and Support People at Risk:
The approaches discussed in this section aim to train individuals in the community to identify vulnerable populations in the community and intervene appropriately. These approaches are focused on increased training opportunities for crisis intervention, gatekeeper training, treatment for at- risk populations, and treatment to prevent re-attempts.
**If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of suicide, you can call the Military Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (for Servicemembers and their families) or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The CDC’s technical package is a wealth of information that can be extremely useful to professionals in a community capacity. We at OneOp Family Development highly recommend exploring the technical package to better educate yourself in techniques to help individuals and families.
If you would like to read the CDC’s Suicide Prevention Technical Package, you can access it here: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-technicalpackage.pdf
This post was written by Caitlyn Brown of the OneOp Family Development Team. The Family Development team aims to support the development of professionals working with military families. Find out more about OneOp Family Development team on our website, Facebook, and Twitter.
