EAST LANSING — A Michigan State University professor will help lead a new suicide prevention research center that aims to reach people in the prison system who are at risk of suicide.
The National Health and Justice Integration Center for Suicide Prevention will be funded for five years with a $15 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The centre’s research is not yet underway but will begin next year.
Jennifer Johnson, a CS Mott professor of public health at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, will be one of the center’s three principal investigators. Two other principal investigators, from Henry Ford Health in Detroit and Brown University in Rhode Island, also lead the program, which involves more than 100 stakeholders, 30 researchers and more than a dozen institutions, including several in the Michigan.
The centre’s work will include four studies. Here is an overview of each:
- an effort to identify people in crisis as they enter the prison system and connect them with health system support,
- an effort to identify and connect at-risk individuals who have left prison with health care providers;
- an effort to identify at-risk individuals at three Michigan prisons and alert prison administrators to allow for further assessments or support
- an effort to add a systems navigator that will work with the Cambridge Police Department and the Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts at a local emergency department to “perform a rapid mental health and suicide risk assessment” on individuals to help police and health care personnel meet their needs.
The work could go a long way to preventing suicides in places where that risk is particularly high, Johnson said.
“One in 3 men and 1 in 8 women who die by suicide have spent at least one night in jail, and often that’s more recent because that’s when things start to go downhill for people” , she said. “That’s when they’re in crisis. If you’re looking for people who are at risk of suicide, who aren’t well connected to care, that’s where they are.”
Identify people at risk of suicide
The struggle to create effective suicide prevention programs often starts with not knowing where to find people in crisis, said Johnson, a licensed clinical psychologist.
“It’s a needle in a haystack,” she said. “How do you find people at risk when they are at risk?”
Prisons are one of the best places to look, Johnson said, because three-quarters of people who enter the criminal justice system have battled substance abuse and more than half have been diagnosed with mental health issues. For these people, a stay in prison, however brief, is a moment of crisis.
The center will find people at risk by applying computer algorithms to large datasets derived from health and medical records, and cross-referencing them with prison admission and criminal justice records, which are public, Lauren said. Weinstock, professor of psychiatry and human behavior. at Brown University.
“It’s a way to identify people in real time, coming in and out of court settings, but also in the health systems of the communities they live in,” said Weinstock, who will also serve as an investigator. main in the center.
The data will be used differently in each of the centre’s four studies to connect identified at-risk individuals with mental and health support, whether they are in prison or recently released, she said.
“We can help identify that person with the health system so they can contact and verify the person and possibly do a suicide risk assessment or provide suicide prevention interventions as needed,” Weinstock said.
READ MORE:
How a national nursing shortage is affecting Sparrow and McLaren hospitals
Historic one-room schoolhouse turned gourmet find near Charlotte is up for sale
Grand Ledge Schools File Lawsuit to Overturn Former Superintendent’s Arbitration Award
An effective tool for prison staff
The data collected will be used to notify administrators at three Michigan prisons participating in the studies when an inmate is identified as being at risk for suicide and in need of further assessments or support, said Sheryl Kubiak, dean of social work at Wayne State University Center for Behavioral Health and Justice.
Kubiak, who will oversee this study, said the prisons involved are not yet finalized. She hopes it will present another tool for prison staff to identify and respond to people in crisis.
“Most of the mechanisms that prisons have when people come in are self-reporting,” Kubiak said, and while staff at every prison ask people on admission if they’re suicidal, there’s a lot things that keep people from being honest about their mental state. .
Genesee County Sheriff’s Office Captain Jason Gould served as a prison administrator for nearly 10 years.
“The fact is that the jails in our county, in our state, certainly in our whole country, have sort of turned into mental health hospitals,” Gould said. jail because the cops on the road literally have nowhere else to put them. It’s not that they necessarily have to be imprisoned. It’s more that they need help and treatment.”
The algorithm-based response project that Kubiak is working on is an effective way to ensure these people get help, he said.
“They’re trying to put all of these pieces together and say, ‘There’s a better model for this and we can be more efficient in getting help for those who need it,'” Gould said.
Those involved in the center’s research will also examine the method’s cost-effectiveness, Weinstock said, in hopes that health care and prison systems may implement them in the future.
Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ .
#MSU #professor #lead #million #suicide #prevention #research #center